THE MISSION TO ROME. 89 



execute them without delay, and, leaving Borne at 

 3 P.M., June 1st, I reached Paris at five in the morn- 

 ing of the 5th. 



M. de Tocqueville had succeeded M. Drouyn de 

 Lhuys, and upon my calling to see him at his own 

 residence, he told me that he had not had time to read 

 my correspondence, and that he was not very well up 

 in the Eoman question. I placed myself at his dis- 

 posal for all the information which he might desire. 

 Neither M. Odilon Barrot, who before my departure 

 had said to me, at the time of the Assembly passing 

 the resolution which condemned the attack upon 

 Rome, u You will have to get us out of this dilemma, 

 we reckon on you," nor any member of the Govern- 

 ment had expressed a desire to hear what I had to 

 say. Silence was necessary for them, in order to get 

 through the interval between the National and the 

 Legislative Assembly, in which the reactionary party 

 was to have a majority, and the Prince-President, who 

 was already preparing for his coup d'etat, received 

 me with his customary good nature, his sympathy for 

 Italy, and a show of indifference for our internal 

 situation. He none the less countersigned, in order 

 to maintain the silence which had been agreed upon 

 concerning Rome, the decree for the examination of 

 my conduct by the Council of State, by virtue of Art. 

 99 of the Constitution, which subjected to the juris- 

 diction of that body the high functionaries of the State 

 in certain predetermined cases, of which mine was the 



