Both authors were frequent visitors at my guardian's house in Paris,
which accounts for the impression made upon my youthful mind by their
written utterances at that time. M. Chevalier was a distinguished
political economist. He had visited Mexico, and knew the value of its
mining and agricultural wealth without sufficiently recognizing the
actual conditions to be dealt with, and he fully indorsed the imperial
conception. "The success of the expedition is infallible," he said. He
explained the resistance of the Mexicans by their hatred of the
Spaniards, and demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the burden of
the venture must fall upon France, who should reap the glory of its
success.

Modern civilization, he urged, includes a distinct branch--the Latin--in
which Catholicism shines. Of this France is the soul as well as the arm.
"Without her, without her energy and her initiative the group of the
Latin races must be reduced to a subordinate rank in the world, and
would have been eclipsed long ago." In comparing upon a map of the world
the space occupied by the Catholic nations two centuries ago with the
present area under their control, "one is dismayed at all that they have
lost and are losing" every day. "The Catholic nations seem threatened to
be swallowed up by an ever-rising flood."*

* "Revue des Deux Mondes," of April, 1862, p. 916. It is interesting
to find him quoting Humboldt's prophecy that "the time will come, be it
a century sooner or later, when the production of silver will have no
other limit than that imposed upon it by its ever-increasing
depreciation as a value." (April, 1862, p. 894).

When the Mexican empire was planned our Civil War had been raging for