'It was a blow struck in broad daylight at the personal rights of every French citizen; just as the removal of the princes from the army was a blow struck in broad daylight at the property rights of every French officer. That it was possible for a Government to strike these blows in cold blood, with no popular excitement instigating them, and with no public resentment following them, should show you, I think, how absurd it is to talk of the French people as a republican people. Any Government in power at Paris may be as arbitrary as it likes, but it must not be stupid. The expulsion of the princes was a crime against liberty; it was as arbitrary an act as the issue of a _lettre de cachet_. But it was also very stupid. It was stupid of the Government because it put them for a time under the thumb of Boulanger. It was stupid of Boulanger, because it put the Comte de Paris at once on a pedestal and forced him before France and Europe into the position of a saviour of society, for whom all the conservative forces of French society must henceforth inevitably work. Whatever becomes of Boulanger in the next elections, he has condemned the Opportunists irretrievably either to hew wood for the Socialists or to carry water for the Monarchists. And with them he has condemned himself. Wait and see if I am not right. 'Come and see me in Picardy. You will find more royalist farmers than I could have believed possible six years ago. If the Comte de Chambord had not kept the Legitimist country gentlemen so much apart as a caste from the peasants, there would be nothing easier than to sweep the country with a monarchist propaganda. It was the royalist peasantry who brought about the great emigration in 1789, long before the Terror, by burning and pillaging the chateaux all over France under orders from Paris, which they believed to be orders from the king. What puzzles them now is the notion lurking down in the bottom of their minds that the restoration of the monarchy will somehow put the country gentlemen over them, and this has much to do with making them, not republicans, but imperialists. As to the republic the overthrow of Grevy had a very bad effect upon the peasants and the farmers in my part of the country, and I believe it had everywhere.' 'Was M. Grevy, then, popular with them?'