Editorial note — From Le Correspondant GENERAL DE LA MORICIÈRE.
Reading edition
[Footnote 41: I must be permitted to refer for all the details of the military career of General de la Moricière to the article of M. de in "Le Correspondant" for April, 1860.]
[Footnote 42: "Les Zouaves et les Chasseurs à pied,"by his Royal Highness the Duke d'Aumale, 1855. "Histoire de la Conquête d'Alger,"by Alfred Nettement.]
[Footnote 43: Tocqueville, born the 29th of July, 1805, was nearly of the same age with La Moricière, who was born the 6th of February, 1806. Before being colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies and in the ministry, they had, still young, met in 1828 at Versailles, where Tocqueville was a judge auditor, and where he received a visit from La Moricière, then hardly out of the Polytechnic School. In a letter of that date which is found in the precious collection published by M. Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville traces a portrait of the future hero which remained a striking likeness to his last days: "I must say that I have been charmed with him personally; I thought I saw in him all the features of a truly remarkable man. I who am habituated to live among men profuse in words with little meaning, was wholly surprised at the craving for clear and distinct understanding with which he seemed to be constantly tormented. The sang-froid with which he stopped me to demand an account of one idea before proceeding to another, which several times a little disconcerted me, and his manner of speaking of only what he perfectly understands, have given me an opinion of him superior to almost any that I have ever formed of any man at first sight."]