'None,' said Ampère. 'They have spoiled their game, if they had a game, by their precipitation. The Emperor has disavowed them, the Neapolitans do not care for them. The Prince de Leuchtenberg, grandson of Eugène Beauharnais, has been talked of. He is well connected, related to many of the reigning families of the Continent, and is said to be intelligent and well educated.'
'If Naples,' I said, 'is to be detached from the kingdom of Italy, Sicily ought to be detached from Naples. There is quite as much mutual antipathy.'
'Would you like to take it?' he asked.
'Heaven forbid!' I answered. 'It would be another Corfu on a larger scale. The better we governed them, the more they would hate us. The only chance for them is to have a king of their own.'
August 15.—In the evening Ampère read to us a comedy called 'Beatrix,' by a writer of some reputation, and a member of the Institut.
It was very bad, full of exaggerated sentiments, forced situations, and the cant of philanthropic despotism.
An actress visits the court of a German grand duke. He is absent. His mother, the duchess, receives her as an equal. The second son falls in love with her at first sight and wishes to marry her. She is inclined to consent, when another duchy falls in, the elder duke resigns to his brother, he becomes king, presses their marriage, his mother does not oppose, and thereupon Beatrix makes a speech, orders her horses, and drives off to act somewhere else.
Ampère reads admirably, but no excellence of reading could make such absurdities endurable. It was written for Ristori, who acted Beatrix in French with success.
Friday, August 16.—We talked at breakfast of 1793.
'It is difficult,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'to believe that the French of that day were our ancestors.'