I made a second visit to Dublin, on which it is not necessary to dwell.
I naturally saw much of Judge O'Hagan and John O'Hagan, the two men living who possessed most of my confidence and affection, and towards the end I had the pleasure of learning that the Judge's youngest daughter, who was my goddaughter, was to become the wife of the younger friend.
I was now preparing to return to Australia. On our way we stopped at Paris, and I saw Louis Napoleon driving in a carriage with two or three friends, without guards or outriders. It was near the market of Rue St. Honoré, and the market people rushed out to see him with a real and manifestly an affectionate interest. It was their eagerness which attracted my attention. I believed him to be still detested by the ouvriers, but a generation has grown up to be men and women since he has possessed power who know only him. I believed him to be carefully guarded, but he was certainly not guarded so on this occasion. His appearance has much improved. His head, I think, has broadened and grown more impressive. When I saw him in London in 1855 I thought he looked like a Birmingham bagman; at present he has a solid and capable look like a successful banker, for he still looks one of the bourgeoisie not of the nobles.
The famous Father Prout was in Paris as correspondent of the Globe, and I hoped to have a pleasant talk with him upon the Ireland of our day, but he was unhappily laid up with an attack which ended fatally. He wrote me from what proved to be his dying bed:—
"My dear Mr. Duffy, You have no idea what pleasure it would give me to see you; but I am bedridden this last month; have a complete extinction of voice, and I am utterly unfit to see any one; no solid food has entered my system since that time, and I am reduced to infant weakness. The best medical attendance surrounds me and all sorts of kind sympathy; but in London they know nothing of my prostrate condition, a clever lady taking care here to imitate my sort of talk in the Globe. I sincerely wish you all the political"8th May. 19, Rue de Moulin.
