[Footnote 1: Barthélemy de St-Hilaire is now Thiers' private secretary and right hand.—ED.]
Tuesday, April 14.—Z., Sumner, Lord Granville, Tocqueville, M. Circourt, St.-Hilaire, and Corcelle breakfasted with us.
The conversation took the same turn as yesterday.
'May I venture,' said Lord Granville to Z., 'to ask whom of your opponents you feared the most?'
'Beyond all comparison,' answered Z., 'Thiers.'
'Was not D.' I asked, 'very formidable?'
'Certainly,' said Z. 'But he had not the wit, or the entraînement of Thiers. His sentences were like his action. He had only one gesture, raising and sinking his right arm, and every time that right arm fell, it accompanied a sentence adding a link to a chain of argument, massive and well tempered, without a particle of dross, which coiled round his adversary like a boa constrictor.'
'And yet,' said M., 'he was always languid and embarrassed at starting; it took him ten minutes to get en train.'
'That defect,' said Lord Granville, 'belonged to many of our good speakers—to Charles Fox—to Lord Holland. Indeed Fox required the excitement of serious business to become fluent. He never made a tolerable after-dinner speech.'
'Among the peculiarities of D.,' said M., 'are his perfect tact and discretion in the tribune, and his awkwardness in ordinary life. In public and in private he is two different men.'