of their six kingdoms, to torment them.  How could men of such remarkable talent fail to divine that the constitutional comedy has in it a moral of profound meaning, and to see that it is the very best policy to give the age a bone to exercise its teeth upon!  I think exactly as they do on the subject of sovereignty.  A power is a moral being as much interested as a man is in self-preservation.  This sentiment of self-preservation is under the control of an essential principle which may be expressed in three words—­to lose nothing.  But in order to lose nothing, a power must grow or remain indefinite, for a power which remains stationary is nullified.  If it retrogrades, it is under the control of something else, and loses its independent existence.  I am quite as well aware, as are those gentlemen, in what a false position an unlimited power puts itself by making concessions; it allows to another power whose essence is to expand a place within its own sphere of activity.  One of them will necessarily nullify the other, for every existing thing aims at the greatest possible development of its own forces.  A power, therefore, never makes concessions which it does not afterwards seek to retract.  This struggle between two powers is the basis on which stands the balance of government, whose elasticity so mistakenly alarmed the patriarch of Austrian diplomacy, for comparing comedy with comedy the least perilous and the most advantageous administration is found in the seesaw system of the English and of the French politics.  These two countries have said to the people, ’You are free;’ and the people have been satisfied; they enter the government like the zeros which give value to the unit.  But if the people wish to take an active part in the government, immediately they are treated, like Sancho Panza, on that occasion when the squire, having become sovereign over an island on terra firma, made an attempt at dinner to eat the viands set before him.

“Now we ought to parody this admirable scene in the management of our homes.  Thus, my wife has a perfect right to go out, provided she tell me where she is going, how she is going, what is the business she is engaged in when she is out and at what hour she will return.  Instead of demanding this information with the brutality of the police, who will doubtless some day become perfect, I take pains to speak to her in the most gracious terms.  On my lips, in my eyes, in my whole countenance, an expression plays, which indicates both curiosity and indifference, seriousness and pleasantry, harshness and tenderness.  These little conjugal scenes are so full of vivacity, of tact and address that it is a pleasure to take part in them.  The very day on which I took from the head of my wife the wreath of orange blossoms which she wore, I understood that we were playing at a royal coronation—­the first scene in a comic pantomime!—­I have my gendarmes!—­I have my guard royal!—­I have my attorney general—­that I do!”