a certain degree they are found in all rich communities, especially where
democracy is more or less in the ascendant. To a certain extent they
exist in the large towns of Germany; they are conspicuously increasing in
England; they are acknowledged to be dangerous in the United States of
America; they are, I am told on good authority, making themselves visible
with the spread of civilization in Russia. But under the French Empire
they have become glaringly rampant, and I venture to predict that the day
is not far off when the rot at work throughout all layers and strata of
French society will insure a fall of the fabric at the sound of which the
world will ring.

"There is many a fair and stately tree which continues to throw out its
leaves and rear its crest till suddenly the wind smites it, and then, and
not till then, the trunk which seems so solid is found to be but the rind
to a mass of crumbled powder."

"Monsieur le Comte," said the Vicomte, "you are a severe critic and a
lugubrious prophet; but a German is so safe from revolution that he takes
alarm at the stir of movement which is the normal state of the French
esprit."

"French esprit may soon evaporate into Parisian _betise_. As to Germany
being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a saying of Goethe's_-but
has Monsieur le Vicomte ever heard of Goethe?"

"Goethe, of course,--_tres joli ecrivain_."

"Goethe said to some one who was making much the same remark as yourself,
'We Germans are in a state of revolution now, but we do things so slowly
that it will be a hundred years before we Germans shall find it out; but