"The Tsar said to me this morning, 'You believe, general, that your dynastic parties would be capable of uniting with the Radicals to overthrow a dynasty which they disliked, in the hope of setting their own in its place; and I am certain of it. Your Legitimist Party especially would not hesitate to do so. I have long since thought that it is the Legitimists who make the Elder Branch of the Bourbons impossible. This is one of the reasons why I recognized the Republic; and also because I perceive in your nation a certain common sense which is wanting in the Germans.' "Later, the Emperor also said, 'The King of Prussia, my brother-in-law, with whom I was on very close terms of friendship, has not taken the slightest heed of my advice. The result is that our political relations have become remarkably cool, to such an extent that they have affected even our family relations. Look at the things he has done: did he not put himself at the head of those fools who dream of an United Germany, and now that he has broken with the Frankfort Parliament, has he not brought himself to the necessity of fighting the troops of the Schleswig-Holstein Duchies, which were levied under his patronage! Is it possible to imagine anything more disgraceful? And now, who knows how far he will go with his constitutional proposals?' He added, 'Do not think that, because I intervene in Hungary, I wish to justify the conduct of Austria in this affair. She has heaped up, one on the other, the most serious faults and the greatest follies; but when all is said and done, it had allowed the country to be invaded by subversive doctrines, and the government had fallen into the hands of disorderly persons. This was not to be endured.' "Speaking of the affairs of Italy, 'We others,' he said, 'see nothing in those temporal functions fulfilled in Rome by ecclesiastics; but it matters little to us how those priests arrange things among themselves, provided that something is set up which will last and that you constitute the power in such a way that it can stand.'" Hereupon Lamoriciere, wounded by this supercilious tone, which smelt somewhat of the autocrat and betrayed a sort of rivalry as between pope and pope, began to defend Catholic institutions. "'Very well, very well,' said the Emperor, ending the conversation, 'let France be as Catholic as she pleases, only let her protect herself against the insane theories and passions of innovators.'" Though hard and austere in the exercise of his power, the Tsar was simple and almost _bourgeois_ in his habits, keeping only the substance of sovereign power and rejecting its pomp and worries. On the 17th of July, the French Ambassador at St Petersburg wrote to me: