personage delivered himself of a _belle phrase_ much admired by his
partisans. The Emperor was then President of the Republic, in a very
doubtful and dangerous position. France seemed on the verge of another
convulsion. A certain distinguished politician recommended the Count de
Chambord to hold himself ready to enter at once as a candidate for the
throne. And the Count, with a benignant smile on his handsome face,
answered, 'All wrecks come to the shore: the shore does not go to the
wrecks.'"

"Beautifully said!" exclaimed the Marquis.

"Not if 'Le beau est toujours le vrai.' My father, no inexperienced nor
unwise politician, in repeating the royal words, remarked: 'The fallacy
of the Count's argument is in its metaphor. A man is not a shore. Do
you not think that the seamen on board the wrecks would be more grateful
to him who did not complacently compare himself to a shore, but
considered himself a human being like themselves, and risked his own life
in a boat, even though it were a cockleshell, in the chance of saving
theirs?"

Alain de Rochebriant was a brave man, with that intense sentiment of
patriotism which characterizes Frenchmen of every rank and persuasion,
unless they belong to the Internationalists; and, without pausing to
consider, he cried, "Your father was right."

The Englishman resumed: "Need I say, my dear Marquis, that I am not a
Legitimist? I am not an Imperialist, neither am I an Orleanist nor a
Republican. Between all those political divisions it is for Frenchmen
to make their choice, and for Englishmen to accept for France that
government which France has established. I view things here as a simple