Your conversation, however, is so agreeable and stimulating that it is
capable of reanimating the dead. Come and try to work this miracle.
A thousand remembrances.
A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.
CONVERSATIONS.
_Paris, Hotel Bedford, April_ 9, 1857.--We reached this place last night.
The Tocquevilles are in our hotel. I went to them in the evening.
Tocqueville asked me how long I intended to remain.
'Four weeks,' I answered.
'I do not think,' he replied, 'that you will be able to do so. Paris has
become so dull that no one will voluntarily spend a month here. The
change which five years have produced is marvellous.
'We have lost our interest not only in public affairs, but in all serious
matters.'
'You will return then to the social habits of Louis Quinze,' I said. 'You
were as despotically governed then as you are now; and yet the _salons_
of Madame Geoffrin were amusing.'
'We may do so in time,' he answered, 'but that time is to come. At
present we talk of nothing but the Bourse. The conversation of our
_salons_ resembles more that of the time of Law, than that of the time of
Marmontel.'
I spent the evening at Lamartine's.
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