TOO RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



Minister would put his answer, which was a perfectly 

 innocent one, and related to a conversation which we 

 had during one of our visits to the monuments of Eome. 

 " You see," I said to him, " all these fine palaces which 

 are now unoccupied : in twenty years' time they will 

 be the refuge places of all the petty sovereigns of 

 Italy." Brought up by his brother, the cardinal, in 

 the ideas of the previous century, the young man had 

 taken my remark as the sign of a diseased imagination. 

 It was on this account, no doubt, that M. Drouyn de 

 Lhuys, after his betrayal of me, endeavoured to make 

 people believe that I was off my head. The story got 

 about among the clerks of the Foreign Office, and 

 upon my return to France it was mentioned in print 

 by the Siecle. I at once wrote to the manager of that 

 paper, M. Chambolle, to ask him what he meant, and 

 he at once contradicted the report in very proper terms. 

 I went at once to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and 

 met M. Drouyn de Lhuys as he was leaving his room 

 after handing over the conduct of affairs to M. de 

 Tocqueville. I met him on the stairs, and as I looked 

 him straight in the face he hastily ascended to the next 

 story and entered the bureau occupied by my brother. 

 After seeing M. de Tocqueville, who informed him that 

 he had not yet made himself familiar with the Eoman 

 question, I proceeded to the Elyse*e, where the Prince 

 President greeted me very kindly ; but while on the 

 day of my departure he spoke his mind freely as to 

 the revolutionists who had embraced the same cause 



