Europe, they strut all puffed out with liberty and soiled with glory. [Sidenote: To the Duchesse de Berry.] "What I have said concerning the temper of the French must not discourage Your Royal Highness; but I wish that the road that leads to the throne of Henry V. were better known. "You know my way of thinking as regards the education of my young King: my opinions are expressed at the end of the pamphlet which I have laid at Your Royal Highness' feet; I could only repeat myself. Let Henry V. be brought up for his century, with and by the men of his century: my whole system is summed up in those two words. Let him, above all, be brought up not to be King. He may reign tomorrow, he may reign only in ten years, he may never reign: for, if the Legitimacy has the different chances of returning which I will presently set out, nevertheless the present edifice might crumble to pieces without the formers rising from its ruins. You have a firm enough soul, Madame, to be able, without allowing yourself to be cast down, to suppose a judgment of God which would thrust back your illustrious House into the popular sources, even as you have a large enough heart to cherish just hopes without allowing them to intoxicate you. I must now place this other side of the picture before you. "Your Royal Highness can defy, can dare everything at your age; you have more years left to run than have elapsed since the commencement of the Revolution. Now, what have these latter years not seen? When the Republic, the Empire, the Legitimacy have passed, shall the amphibious thing known as the _juste-milieu_ not pass? What! Was it to arrive at the wretchedness of the men and things of the present moment that we have gone through and expended so many crimes, so much misfortune, talent, liberty and glory? What! Europe overturned, thrones tumbling one over the other, generations hurled into the common ditch with the steel in their breasts, the world labouring for half a century, and all this to bring forth the sham Legitimacy? One could conceive a great republic emerging from this social cataclysm: it would at least be fitted to inherit the conquests of the Revolution, that is, political liberty, liberty and publicity of thought, the levelling of ranks, the admission to all offices, the equality of all before the law, popular election and sovereignty. But how can we suppose a troop of sordid mediocrities, saved from shipwreck, to be able to employ those principles? To what a proportion have they not already reduced them! They detest them, they hanker only after laws of exception; they would like to catch all those liberties in the crown which they have forged, as in a trap; after which they would fiddle-faddle sanctimoniously with canals, railways, a mish-mash