A. C.
The letter that follows is endorsed by Reeve 'M. de Circourt's last letter to me. He was struck with apoplexy on the 15th, and died on the 17th of November. The last token of fifty years' friendship':—
From the Comte de Circourt
La Celle, November 12th.
My dear Sir,—Many thanks for your kind letter of the 6th. I am still an invalid, conjuguant in all its tenses the verb grippe, with its near relation bronchitis. However, I am recovering by-and-by, and the weather—not fine, still very mild—helps me towards recovering my liberty of locomotion. I am the more sorry for my réclusion that I had begun some plantations in my garden. Fancy what it is to plant trees by half-dozens and to buy land by wheelbarrows!
We are in a state of partial fermentation and general disgust. The President videt meliora probatque, deteriora sequitur; he is absolutely sunken in the opinions, but tolerated, because he lets every party at freedom to plot and to hope. Waddington does not fare better, but Jules Simon has presently no chance of replacing him. The sympathy which Ferry has proclaimed for the Reformed Church [Footnote: See Times, November 8th.]—very natural in itself—may be mischievous for them; our nation has never any sympathy for minorities. The leaders of the Clerical party have lowered their teaching and their practices to the level of the most obtuse intellects and the most childish enthusiasms; they make conquests by myriads; and as, in our present state of society, numbers are accounted for everything, the Government and ruling party have already encountered, and shall encounter more and more, a formidable opposition, which, if it does not drag the country into civil war, cannot fail to accelerate and precipitate the fate of the Republican Government. As the Duc d'Aumale seems resolved never to put himself forward, the conjectures hover between Galliffet [Footnote: General de Galliffet was more especially known for the stern justice he had meted out to the Communards of 1871.] and several others, all men of action, although none of them has the prestige which made, in 1799, the task of Bonaparte so wonderfully easy. The 'Great Unknown' will be revealed to us by some sudden stroke; our people is perfectly disposed to acknowledge a master, and prays only that 'nous ayons un bon tyran,' since we must have one.
Lord Beaconsfield's speech [Footnote: At the Mansion House on the 10th. See Times, November 11th.] shall not put an end to the embarrassments of our Exchange, shaken to its foundations by the curiously tragical episode [Footnote: 'Gigantic swindle' would more correctly designate it. See Times, November 7th. Philippart, having made away with some 100,000,000 francs, had judiciously vanished.] of Philippart. Imperium et Libertas, i.e. 'Domination abroad and Freedom at home,' is a proud legacy of 'the most high and palmy days of Rome'; but it will be difficult to force the submission to that maxim upon all the powers of the world. If the Turks had studied the history of classical times, they would believe that the days of Civis Romanus sum and the Reges clientes Populi Romani are come again for the East; and what immense space does this name design, since the exclusive and dominating influence claimed by the Premier begins at the Adriatic and ends—nowhere; for the whole of Affghanistan being brought under British control, and Turkish Asia on the other side being claimed as a protected and indirectly governed country, it will become necessary that the intermediate region, Persia, be assimilated to the rest of the dependencies of an Empire which, at the farthest end, shall soon be contiguous to China.
The task of the Russian people is very different. The stern decrees of Providence have made of it the antagonist and hereditary foe of the Asiatic barbarics, which it has faced under the walls of Kief and Moscow, and pressed, by dint of repeated battles and immense sacrifices, to the foot of the Himalaya range and the course of the Upper Oxus. Sooner or later, a tremendous shock must happen between the two gigantic Empires which meet upon that debateable ground. I hope I may never witness it; but I do regret much the disparition of the ample neutral ground, which till lately stretched from the Indus to the Yaxartes….
Many wishes for your health and occupations.
Yours very truly,