Not a human
being in my commune reads a newspaper or indeed reads anything: yet it
contains 300 electors. In the towns there is some knowledge and some
political feeling, but for political purposes they are carefully swamped
by being joined to uneducated agricultural districts.
'Still I think I might enter the _Corps legislatif_ for our capital Le
Mans. Perhaps at a general election twenty liberals might come in. But
what good could they do? The opposition in the last session strengthened
Louis Napoleon. It gave him the prestige of liberality and success.'
'You think him, then,' I said, 'safe for the rest of his life?'
'Nothing,' he answered, 'is safe in France, and the thing most unsafe is
a Government. Our caprices are as violent as they are sudden. They
resemble those of a half-tamed beast of prey, which licks its keeper's
hand to-day, and may tear him to-morrow. But if his life be not so long
as to enable the fruits of his follies to show themselves in their
natural consequences--unsuccessful war, or defeated diplomacy, or
bankruptcy, or heavily increased taxation--he may die in the Tuileries.
'But I infer from his conduct that he thinks an insurrection against his
tyranny possible, and that he is preparing to meet it by a popular war--
that is to say, by a war with England.
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