of the people usurpation, and universal suffrage the pricking of
bayonets. Above all, I would avoid insulting the whole French nation,
who have judged their own position and acted accordingly. If Louis
Napoleon disappoints their expectation, he won't sit long where he is.
Of that I feel satisfactory assurance; and, considering the national
habits of insurrection, I really think that others may.

Meanwhile it is just to tell you that the two deepest-minded persons
whom we have known in Paris--one an ultra-Republican of European
reputation (I don't like mentioning names), and the other a
Constitutionalist of the purest and noblest moral nature--are both
inclined to take favorable views of the President's personal character
and intentions. For my part, I don't pretend to an opinion. He may be,
as they say, '_bon enfant_,' '_homme de conscience_,' and 'so much in
earnest as to be fanatical,' or he may be a wretch and a reptile, as you
say in England. That's nothing to the question as I see it. I don't take
it up by that handle at all. Caligula's horse or the people's
'Messiah,' as I heard him called the other day--what then? You are
wonderfully intolerant, you in England, of equine consulships, you who
bear with quite sufficient equanimity a great rampancy of beasts all
over the world--Mr. Forster not blowing the trumpet of war, and Mrs.
Alfred Tennyson not loading the rifles.

There now--I've done with politics to-day. Only just let me tell you
that Cormenin is said to be the adviser in the matter of the Orleans
decrees. So much the worse for him.

Whom do you think I saw yesterday? George Sand. Oh, I have been in such
fear about it! It's the most difficult thing to get access to her, and,
notwithstanding our letter from Mazzini, we were assured on all sides