“Your wife is the great success of the hour. Yesterday Madame de Camps was repeating all these stories to me at the Italian Opera. ‘Don’t talk to me,’ said I, ‘you none of you know half the facts. Paul had robbed the Bank and swindled the Treasury. He murdered Ezzelino, and caused the death of three Medoras of the Rue Saint-Denis, and, between you and me, I believe him to be implicated in the doings of the Ten Thousand. His agent is the notorious Jacques Collin, whom the police have never been able to find since his last escape from the hulks; Paul harbored him in his house. As you see, he is capable of any crime; he is deceiving the government. Now they have gone off together to see what they can do in India, and rob the Great Mogul.’—Madame de Camps understood that a woman of such distinction as herself ought not to use her pretty lips as a Venetian lion’s maw.
“Many persons, on hearing these tragicomedies, refuse to believe them; they defend human nature and noble sentiments, and insist that these are fictions. My dear fellow, Talleyrand made this clever remark, ‘Everything happens.’ Certainly even stranger things than this domestic conspiracy happens under our eyes; but the world is so deeply interested in denying them, and in declaring that it is slandered, and besides, these great dramas are played so naturally, with a veneer of such perfect good taste, that I often have to wipe my eyeglass before I can see to the bottom of things. But I say once more, when a man is my friend with whom I have received the baptism of Champagne, and communion at the altar of Venus Commoda, when we have together been confirmed by the clawing fingers of the croupier, and when then my friend is in a false position, I would uproot twenty families to set him straight again.
“You must see that I have a real affection for you; have I ever to your knowledge written so long a letter as this is? So read with care all that follows.
“Alack! Paul; I must take to writing, I must get into the habit of jotting down the minutes for dispatches; I am starting on a political career. Within five years I mean to have a Minister’s portfolio, or find myself an ambassador where I can stir public affairs round in my own way. There is an age when a man’s fairest mistress is his country. I am joining the ranks of those who mean to overthrow not merely the existing Ministry, but their whole system. In fact, I am swimming in the wake of a prince who halts only on one foot, and whom I regard as a man of political genius, whose name is growing great in history; as complete a prince as a great artist may be. We are Ronquerolles, Montriveau, the Grandlieus, the Roche-Hugons, Sérizy, Féraud, and Granville, all united against the priestly party, as the silly party that is represented by the Constitutionnel ingeniously calls it. We mean to upset the two Vandenesses, the Ducs de Lenoncourt, de Navarreins, de Langeais, and de la Grande-Aumônerie. To gain our end, we may go so far as to form a coalition with la Fayette, the Orleanists, the Left—all men who must be got rid of as soon as we have won the day, for to govern on their principles is impossible; and we are capable of anything for the good of the country—and our own.
“Personal questions as to the King’s person are mere sentimental folly in these days; they must he cleared away. From that point of view, the English, with their sort of Doge, are more advanced than we are. Politics have nothing to do with that, my dear fellow. Politics consist in giving the nation an impetus by creating an oligarchy embodying a fixed theory of government, and able to direct public affairs along a straight path, instead of allowing the country to be pulled in a thousand different directions, which is what has been happening for the last forty years in our beautiful France—at once so intelligent and so sottish, so wise and so foolish; it needs a system, indeed, much more than men. What are individuals in this great question? If the end is a great one, if the country may live happy and free from trouble, what do the masses care for the profits of our stewardship, our fortune, privileges, and pleasures?
“I am now standing firm on my feet. I have at the present moment a hundred and fifty thousand francs a year in the Three per Cents, and a reserve of two hundred thousand francs to repair damages. Even this does not seem to me very much ballast in the pocket of a man starting left foot foremost to scale the heights
