Although he is animated with the best intentions in the world and has a very visible quantity of intelligence and aptitude, I fear that Louis Bonaparte will find his task too much for him. To him, France, the century, the new spirit, the instincts peculiar to the soil and the period are so many closed books. He looks without understanding them at minds that are working, Paris, events, men, things and ideas. He belongs to that class of ignorant persons who are called princes and to that category of foreigners who are called ÊmigrÊs. To those who examine him closely he has the air of a patient rather than of a governing man.

There is nothing of the Bonapartes about him, either in his face or manner. He probably is not a Bonaparte. The free and easy ways of Queen Hortense are remembered. “He is a memento of Holland!” said Alexis de Saint Priest to me yesterday. Louis Bonaparte certainly possesses the cold manner of the Dutch.

Louis Bonaparte knows so little about Paris that the first time I saw him he said to me:

“I have been hunting for you. I went to your former residence. What is this Place des Vosges?”

“It is the Place Royale,” I said.

“Ah!” he continued, “is it an old place?”

He wanted to see Beranger. He went to Passy twice without being able to find him at home. His cousin Napoleon timed his visit more happily and found BÉranger by his fireside. He asked him:

“What do you advise my cousin to do?”

“To observe the Constitution.”

“And what ought he to avoid?”

“Violating the Constitution.”

BÉranger could not be induced to say anything else.

Yesterday, December 5, 1850, I was at the FranÇais. Rachel played “Adrienne Lecouvreur.” Jerome Bonaparte occupied a box next to mine. During an entr’acte I paid him a visit. We chatted. He said to me:

“Louis is mad. He is suspicious of his friends and delivers himself into the hands of his enemies. He is suspicious of his family and allows himself to be bound hand and foot by the old Royalist parties. On my return to France I was better received by Louis Philippe at the Tuileries than I am at the Elysee by my nephew. I said to him the other day before one of his ministers (Fould): ‘Just remember a little! When you were a candidate for the presidency, Monsieur here (I pointed to Fould) called upon me in the Rue d’Alger, where I lived, and begged me in the name of MM. Thiers, Mole, Duvergier de Hauranne, Berryer, and Bugeaud to enter the lists for the presidency. He told me that never would you get the “Constitutionnel;” that in Mole’s opinion you were an idiot, and that Thiers looked upon you as a blockhead; that I alone could rally everybody to me and win against Cavaignac. I refused. I told them that you represented youth and the future, that you had a quarter of a century before you, whereas I could hardly count upon eight or ten years; that I was an invalid and wanted to be let alone. That is what these people were doing and that is what I did. And you forget all this! And you make these gentlemen the masters! And you show the door to your cousin, my son, who defended you in the Assembly and devoted himself to furthering your candidacy! And you are strangling universal suffrage, which made you what you are! I’ faith I shall say like Mole that you are an idiot, and like Thiers that you are a blockhead!’”

The King of Westphalia paused for a moment, then continued:

“And do you know, Monsieur Victor Hugo, what he replied to me? ‘You will see!’ No one knows what is at the bottom of that man!”