"Madame, on seeing me extend into a long future the thought of the education of Henry V., you will naturally suppose that I do not think him destined to ascend the throne so soon. I will endeavour impartially to deduct the opposite reasons for hopes and fears. "The Restoration may take place to-day, to-morrow. There is something so sudden, so inconstant observable in the French character, that a change is always probable; it is always safe to wager a hundred to one, in France, that any particular thing will not last: it is at the moment when the Government appears most firmly seated that it falls. We have seen the nation worship Bonaparte and detest him, abandon him, take him back, abandon him again, forget him in his exile, raise altars to him after his death, and then relapse from its enthusiasm. That fickle nation, which never loved liberty save by fits and starts, but which ever dotes on equality; that multiform nation was fanatical under Henry IV., factious under Louis XIII., grave under Louis XIV., revolutionary under Louis XVI., gloomy under the Republic, warlike under Bonaparte, constitutional under the Restoration: to-day it is prostituting its liberties to the so-called Republican Monarchy, perpetually varying its nature in the spirit of its leaders. Its changefulness has increased since it has thrown off the habits of the home and the yoke of religion. [Sidenote: On the prospects.] "Therefore, a chance may bring about the fall of the Government of the 9th of August; but a chance may be delayed: an abortive child has been born to us, but France is a sturdy mother; she may, with the milk of her breast, be able to correct the vices of a depraved paternity. "Although the present royalty does not seem as though it were likely to live, I continue to fear that it may live beyond the limit which one might assign to it. Since forty years, all governments have perished in France by their own fault alone. Louis XVI. could have saved his crown and his life twenty times over; the Republic died only of the excesses of its furies; Bonaparte was able to establish his dynasty, yet flung himself down from the height of his glory; but for the Ordinances of July, the Legitimist Throne would still be standing. The head of the present Government will make none of those mistakes that kill; his power will never commit suicide; all his cleverness is employed exclusively for his preservation: he is too intelligent to die by an act of folly nor has he enough in him to be guilty of the mistakes of genius or the weaknesses of honour or virtue. He has felt that he might be destroyed by war: he will not make war; it matters little to him, whether France be degraded in the eyes of foreigners: publicists will prove to him that disgrace is industry and ignominy credit.