144 ^ Century oj Family Letters [CHAP, xi 



Madame Sismondi to her niece Emma Darwin. 



Janry. 27 [1852]. 



I write again to accuse myself of being a duped fool to 

 my last hope for France, 1 and to ask your pity. I should 

 feel humiliated for myself, if the feeling was not lost in 

 sorrow. The Beast [Louis Napoleon] has taken the wrong 

 turn, tho' the right was straight before him, and the only 

 possible one that could lead to any glory for him. The 

 fall of France seems decreed by Heaven, and we must 

 submit as to all inevitable things. Now I think everything 

 may be possible, even an invasion. Madame de Stael says 

 the ignorance in which they are kept is most painful. No 

 foreign papers are allowed to enter, not even Le Journal de 

 Geneve. No paper is published but his own, Le Constitu- 

 tionnel. " There is no government whatever but what is 

 concentrated in his own hand as he is a Being without 

 one moral sentiment, no one feels secure." 



My dear Emma, how I do love you when you talk of 

 your children ! you never speak so prettily as then. You 

 are poetic without knowing it, which is the prettiest poetry 

 of all. The drop of water on the cabbage-leaf is delicious. 

 Emma [Allen] cried out on the charms of Georgey, and 

 began telling me instances of Ms promising genius. She 

 thought him a very remarkable child. She says he has 

 a laugh so hearty, so merry, she would defy anyone not 

 laughing with him. Blessed mother of happy children you 

 are, my Emma; I believe with the Turks there is no cloud 

 without a silver lining. Now that I stand at the end of 

 life, as it were, and commonly called a long one too, the 

 whole appears to me so short, so fleeting, as if nothing was 

 worth thinking of but the Eternity in which we recover all 

 our earthly loves. 



1 The Coup cTEtat was on Dec. 2nd, 1851. France appeared to 

 condone all the horrora which had just taken place, for in the same 

 month Louis Napoleon was re-elected as President for 10 years by 

 7,000,000 votes. A year later by another plebiscite he became 

 Emperor of the French. 



