'It has not intoxicated him,' I answered, 'because he was prepared for it—he always expected it.'
'He could scarcely,' replied Tocqueville, 'have really and soberly expected it until 1848.
'Boulogne and Strasbourg were the struggles of a desperate man, who staked merely a life of poverty, obscurity, and exile. Even if either of them had succeeded, the success could not have been permanent. A surprise, if it had thrown him upon the throne, could not have kept him there. Even after 1848, though the Bourbons were discredited, we should not have tolerated a Bonaparte if we had not lost all our self-possession in our terror of the Rouges. That terror created him, that terror supports him; and habit, and the dread of the bloodshed and distress, and the unknown chances of a revolution, will, I think, maintain him during his life.
'The same feelings will give the succession to his heir. Whether the heir will keep it, is a different question.'
Sunday, April 12.—Tocqueville drank tea with us. I asked him if he had seen the Due de Nemours' letter.
'I have not seen it,' he answered. 'In fact, I have not wished to see it. I disapprove of the Fusionists, and the anti-Fusionists, and the Legitimists, and the Orleanists-in short, of all the parties who are forming plans of action in events which may not happen, or may not happen in my time, or may be accompanied by circumstances rendering those plans absurd, or mischievous, or impracticable,'
'But though you have not read the letter,' I said, 'you know generally what are its contents.'
'Of course I do,' he replied. 'And I cannot blame the Comte de Chambord for doing what I do myself—for refusing to bind himself in contingencies, and to disgust his friends in the hope of conciliating his enemies.'
'Do you believe,' I asked, 'that the mere promise of a Constitution would offend the Legitimists?'
'I do not think,' he answered, 'that they would object to a Constitution giving them what they would consider their fair share of power and influence.