'
'What do you hear,' I asked, 'of his conduct in the East?'
'I hear,' said Tocqueville, 'that he showed want, not so much of courage,
as of temper and of subordination. He would not obey orders; he would not
even transmit them, so that Canrobert was forced to communicate directly
with the officers of Napoleon's division, and at last required him to
take sick leave, or to submit to a court-martial.'
'I thought,' I said, 'that he was really ill.'
'That is not the general opinion,' said Tocqueville. 'He showed himself
at a ball directly after his return, with no outward symptoms of ill
health.'
The conversation turned on English politics.
'So many of my friendships,' said Tocqueville, 'and so many of my
sympathies, are English, that what is passing _in_ your country, and
_respecting_ your country, gives me great pain, and greater anxiety. To
us, whom unhappily experience has rendered sensitive of approaching
storms, your last six months have a frightfully revolutionary appearance.
'There is with you, as there was with us in 1847, a general _malaise_ in
the midst of general prosperity. Your people seem, as was the case with
ours, to have become tired of their public men, and to be losing faith in
their institutions.
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