BOOK XV[263

The Republicans--The Orleanist--M. Thiers is sent to Neuilly--Convocation of peers at the Grand Refendary's--The letter reaches me too late--Saint-Cloud--Scene between M. le Dauphin and the Maréchal de Raguse--Neuilly--M. le Duc d'Orléans--The Raincy--The Prince comes to Paris--A deputation from the Elective Chamber offers M. le Duc d'Orléans the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom--He accepts--Efforts of the Republicans--M. le Duc d'Orléans goes to the Hôtel de Ville--The Republicans at the Palais-Royal--The King leaves Saint-Cloud--Madame la Dauphine arrives at Trianon--The Diplomatic Body--Rambouillet--3 August: opening of the Session--Letter from Charles X. to M. le Duc d'Orléans--The mob sets out for Rambouillet--Flight of the King--Reflections--The Palais-Royal--Conversations--Last political temptation--M. de Sainte-Aulaire--Last gasp of the Republican Party--The day's work of the 7th of August--Sitting of the House of Peers--My speech--I leave the Palace of the Luxembourg, never to return--My resignations--Charles X. takes ship at Cherbourg-What the Revolution of July will be--Close of my political career.

The three parties were beginning to take shape and to act against one another: the deputies who were in favour of a monarchy as represented by the Elder Branch were the strongest, legally: they rallied to themselves all that tended towards order; but, morally, they were the weakest: they hesitated; they did not speak out: it was becoming manifest, from the tergiversation of the Court, that they would fall into the Usurpation rather than see themselves swallowed up by the Republic.

The latter had a placard posted on the walls saying:

"France is free. She grants the Provisional Government the right only of consulting her, until the time when she shall have expressed her will by new elections. No more Royalty. The executive power entrusted to a temporary President. Mediate or immediate co-operation of all the citizens in the election of Deputies. Liberty of worship."

This placard summed up the only just things in the republican opinion; a new assembly of deputies would have decided if it was well or ill to give way to that wish of "no more Royalty;" each would have pleaded his cause, and the election of a government of whatever kind by a national congress would have borne the character of legality.

On another republican poster of the same date, 30 July, one read in large letters:

"No more Bourbons.... All is won: greatness, repose, public prosperity, liberty."

Lastly appeared an address to Messieurs the members of the Municipal Commission forming a provisional government; it demanded:

"That no proclamation be issued naming a ruler, so long as the form itself of the government can not yet be decided; that the Provisional Government remain in power until the wish of the majority of Frenchmen be known, any other measure being ill-timed and culpable."

This address, emanating from the members of a commission appointed by a large number of citizens of different wards in Paris, was signed by Messieurs Chevalier[264], as chairman, Trélat[265], Teste[266], Lepelletier, Guinard[267], Hingray[268], Cauchois-Lemaire[269], etc.

In this popular assembly, they proposed to offer the Presidency of the Republic by acclamation to M. de La Fayette; they relied upon the principles which the Chamber of Representatives of 1815 had proclaimed, when separating. Various printers refused to publish these proclamations, saying that they had been forbidden to do so by M. le Duc de Broglie. The Republic was casting the throne of Charles X. to the ground, and it feared the prohibitions of M. de Broglie, who had no character of any kind.

[Sidenote: The Orleanist party.]

I have told you how, during the night between the 29th and 30th of July, M. Laffitte, with M. Thiers and M. Mignet, had made every preparation to draw the eyes of the public on M. le Duc d'Orléans. On the 30th appeared proclamations and addresses, the fruit of this cabal, with "Let us avoid the Republic" for their burden. Next came the feats of arms of Jemmapes[270] and Valmy[271], and the people was assured that M. le Duc d'Orléans was not a Capet, but a Valois[272].

And meanwhile M. Thiers, sent by M. Laffitte, was ambling towards Neuilly with M. Scheffer[273]: H.R.H. was not there. Great wordy contests between Mademoiselle d'Orléans[274] and M. Thiers: it was agreed that they should write to M. le Duc d'Orléans to persuade him to rally to the Revolution. M. Thiers himself wrote a note to the Prince, and Madame Adélaïde promised to precede her family to Paris. Orleanism had made progress and, on the evening, of that same day, the question had been raised among the Deputies of conferring the powers of Lieutenant-general on M. le Duc d'Orléans.

M. de Sussy, with the Saint-Cloud Ordinances, had met with an even more indifferent reception at the Hôtel de Ville than in the Chamber of Deputies. Armed with a "receipt" from M. de La Fayette, he returned to M. de Mortemart, who exclaimed:

"You have done more than save my life; you have saved my honour."

The Municipal Commission issued a proclamation in which it declared that "the crimes of his [Charles X.'s] power were ended," and that "the people would have a government which should owe its origin to them [the people]:" an ambiguous phrase which you were free to interpret as you pleased. Messieurs Laffitte and Périer did not sign this document M. de La Fayette, alarmed, a little late in the day, at the idea of the Orleanist Royalty, sent M. Odilon Barrot to the Chamber of Deputies to announce that the people, the authors of the Revolution of July, did not mean to end it by a simple change of persons, and that the blood that had been shed was well worth a few liberties. There was talk of a proclamation of the Deputies to invite H.R.H. the Duc d'Orléans to come to the Capital: after some communications with the Hôtel de Ville, this plan of a proclamation was demolished. Nevertheless it led to the formation of a sort of deputation of twelve members who were to go to the Lord of Neuilly[275] to offer him that Lieutenant-generalship for which they had not been able to make way in a proclamation.

In the evening, the Grand Refendary assembled the Peers in his apartments[276]: his letter, through negligence or policy, reached me too late. I hurried to hasten to the meeting; they opened the gate of the Allée de l'Observatoire for me; I crossed the Luxembourg garden: when I reached the palace, I found no one there. I made my way back past the flower-beds, my eyes fixed on the moon. I regretted the seas and the mountains above which she had appeared to me, the forests in whose tops, herself vanishing in silence, she had seemed to repeat to me the maxim of Epicurus[277]:

"Conceal thy life."

[Sidenote: Troops retire to Saint-Cloud.]

I have left the troops falling back upon Saint-Cloud, on the evening of the 29th. The citizens of Chaillot and Passy attacked them, killing a captain of Carabineers and two officers, and wounding some ten soldiers. Captain Le Motha[278] of the Guards was struck by a bullet fired by a child whom he had been pleased to spare. This captain had given in his resignation at the time of the Ordinances; but, seeing that they were fighting on the 27th, he returned to his regiment to share the dangers of his comrades. Never, to the glory of France, was there a finer battle waged in the parties opposed between liberty and honour.

Children, always fearless because they know nothing of danger, played a sad part in the work of the Three Days: sheltered behind their weakness, they fired point-blank at officers who would have thought themselves dishonoured in beating them back. Modern arms place death at the disposal of the feeblest hand. Ugly, wizened little monkeys, libertines before they have the power of being so, cruel and perverse, these little heroes of the three days gave themselves up to assassination with all the abandonment of innocence. Let us beware lest, by imprudent praises, we give birth to the emulation of evil: the children of Sparta used to go helot-hunting.

Monsieur le Dauphin received the soldiers at the gate of the village of Boulogne, in the wood, and then returned to Saint-Cloud.

Saint-Cloud was guarded by the four companies of the Body-guards. The battalion of the pupils of Saint-Cyr had arrived: in rivalry and in contrast with the Polytechnic School, they had embraced the royal cause. The attenuated troops, returning from a three days' battle, by their wounds and dilapidated appearance caused only amazement to the titled, gilded and well-fed flunkeys who dined at the royal table. No one thought of cutting the telegraphic lines; couriers, travellers, mail-coaches, diligences passed freely along the road, with the tricolour flag, which urged the villages to revolt as it passed through them. Seduction by means of money and women was commencing. The proclamations of the Commune of Paris were hawked to and fro. The King and Court still refused to be persuaded that they were in danger. In order to prove that they despised the doings of a few mutinous burgesses and that there was no revolution, they let everything go: God's finger is seen in all this.

At nightfall, on the 30th of July, at nearly the same hour when the commission of the Deputies left for Neuilly, an adjutant announced to the troops that the Ordinances were repealed. The soldiers shouted, "Long live the King!" and resumed their gaiety at the bivouac; but this announcement made by the adjutant sent by the Duc de Raguse had not been communicated to the Dauphin, who was a great lover of discipline and flew into a rage. The King said to the marshal:

"The Dauphin is displeased; go and have your explanation with him."

The marshal did not find the Dauphin in his own apartments, and waited for him in the billiard-room with the Duc de Guiche[279] and the Duc de Ventadour, the Prince's aides-de-camp. The Dauphin entered: at sight of the marshal, he flushed to his eyes, crossed his ante-chamber with those singular long strides of his, reached his drawing-room and said to the marshal:

"Come in!"

The door closed behind them: a great noise was heard; their voices were raised more and more; the Duc de Ventadour grew anxious and opened the door; the marshal came out, pursued by the Dauphin, who called him a double traitor:

"Give up your sword! Give up your sword!" he cried and, flinging himself upon him, tore his sword from him.

[Sidenote: Anger of the Dauphin.]

M. Delarue, the marshal's aide-de-camp, tried to throw himself between him and the Dauphin, and was held back by M. de Montgascon. The Prince endeavoured to break the marshal's sword and, in so doing, cut his hands. He cried:

"Help, Guards! Seize him!"

The Body-guards rushed in; if the marshal had not made a movement of the head, their bayonets would have struck him in the face. The Duc de Raguse was placed under arrest in his room[280].

The King arranged this affair as best he could. It was the more deplorable as neither of the actors inspired any great interest. When the son[281] of the Balafré slew Saint-Pol[282], the marshal of the League, men recognised in this sword-stroke the pride and blood of the Guises; but, supposing even that Monsieur le Dauphin, a mightier lord than a Prince of Lorraine, had cut down Marshal Marmont, what would that have mattered? If the marshal had killed Monsieur le Dauphin, it would only have been a little more singular. We should see Cæsar, the descendant of Venus, and Brutus[283], the heir of Junius[284], pass through the streets without looking at them. Nothing is great to-day, because nothing is high.

That is, how at Saint-Cloud, the last hour of the Monarchy was spent; that pale Monarchy, disfigured and blood-stained, resembled the portrait which d'Urfé makes for us of a great personage dying:

"His eyes were wan and sunk; his lower jaw, covered only with a little skin, seemed to have disappeared; his beard was bristling, his colour yellow, his glance slow, his breath bated. Already from his mouth issued no longer human words, but oracles."

M. le Duc d'Orléans had, throughout his life, entertained for the throne the inclination that every high-born soul feels for power. This inclination is modified according to the possessor's character: impetuous and aspiring, or slack and fawning; imprudent, open, declared in the former, circumspect, hidden, shamefaced in the latter: one, in order to elevate himself, is capable of any crime; the other, in order to rise, can descend to any meanness. M. le Duc d'Orléans belonged to this latter class of ambitious men. Follow this Prince in his career: he never says and never does anything completely; he always leaves a door open for escape. During the Restoration, he flattered the Court and encouraged liberal opinion; Neuilly became the meeting-place of discontent and the discontented. They sighed, they pressed each other's hands with eyes raised to Heaven, but they did not utter a word of enough significance to be reported in high places. When a member of the Opposition died, a carriage was sent to the funeral, but the carriage was empty: the livery is admitted to every door and every grave-side. If, at the time of my disgrace at Court, I found myself at the Tuileries on M. le Duc d'Orléans' path, he went past, taking care to bow to the right, in such a manner that, I being on the left, he turned his shoulder to me. That would be remarked and would do good.

Was M. le Duc d'Orléans aware beforehand of the Ordinances of July? Was he told of them by a person who held M. Ouvrard's secret? What did he think of them? What were his hopes and fears? Did he conceive a plan? Did he urge M. Laffitte to act as he did act, or did he let M. Laffitte act as he pleased? To judge from Louis-Philippe's character, we must presume that he took no resolve, and that his political timidity, taking refuge in his falseness, awaited events as the spider awaits the gnat which will be taken in its web. He allowed the moment to conspire; he himself conspired only by his wishes, of which it is probable that he was afraid.

[Sidenote: M. le Duc D'Orléans.]

There were two courses open to M. le Duc d'Orléans: the first, and the more honourable, was to hasten to Saint-Cloud, to interpose himself between Charles X. and the people, in order to save the crown of the one and the liberty of the other; the second consisted in flinging himself on the barricades, with the tricolour flag in his hand, and placing himself at the head of the movement of the world. Philip had to choose between the honest man and the great man: he preferred to pilfer the crown from the King and liberty from the people. During the confusion and misfortune of a fire, a pickpocket artfully purloins the most valuable objects from the burning palace, without heeding the cries of a child which the flames have surprised in its cradle.

The rich prey once seized, plenty of hounds were there for the distribution of the quarry: then came all those old corruptions of the preceding systems, those receivers of stolen goods, filthy, half-crushed toads that have been walked upon a hundred times and that live, all flattened out as they are. And yet those are the men of whom one boasts, whose ability one exalts! Milton thought otherwise when he wrote this passage in a sublime letter:

"If ever God poured a strong love for moral beauty in a man's breast, he did so in mine. Wherever I meet a man despising the false esteem of the vulgar, daring to aspire, by his opinions, his language and his conduct, to the greatest excellence which the lofty wisdom of the ages has taught us, I become united to that man by a sort of necessary attachment. There is no power in Heaven or upon earth which can prevent me from contemplating with respect and fondness those who have attained the summit of dignity and virtue."

The blind Court of Charles X. never knew where it stood or with whom it had to do: it might have ordered M. le Duc d'Orléans to Saint-Cloud, and it is probable that, at the first moment, he would have obeyed; it might have had him kidnapped at Neuilly, on the very day of the Ordinances: it took neither course.

On receipt of advices which Madame de Bondy brought him, at Neuilly, in the night of Tuesday the 27th, Louis-Philippe rose at three o'clock in the morning and withdrew to a place known only to his family. He had the double fear of being touched by the insurrection in Paris and of being arrested by a captain of the Guards. He therefore went to the Rainey, there in solitude to listen to the distant gun-shots of the Battle of the Louvre, as I had listened under a tree to those of the Battle of Waterloo. The feelings which doubtless stirred the Prince must have had very little in common with those which oppressed me in the plains of Ghent.

I have told you how, on the morning of the 30th of July, M. Thiers failed to find the Duc d'Orléans at Neuilly; but Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans[285] sent to fetch H.R.H.: the Comte Anatole de Montesquiou[286] was charged with the message. On arriving at the Rainey, M. de Montesquiou had all the difficulty in the world to decide Louis-Philippe to return to Neuilly, there to await the deputation from the Chamber of Deputies.

At last, persuaded by the Duchesse d'Orléans' lord-in-waiting, Louis-Philippe stepped into his carriage. M. de Montesquiou started in advance; at first he went pretty fast; but, when he looked back, he saw H.R.H.'s calash stop and drive back again towards the Rainey. M. de Montesquiou returned at full speed and entreated the future majesty, who was hastening to conceal himself in the desert, like the illustrious Christians who used to flee from the burdensome dignity of the episcopate: the faithful servant obtained a last unhappy victory.

On the evening of the 30th, the deputation of twelve members of the Chamber of Deputies, which was to offer the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom to the Prince, sent him a message to Neuilly. Louis-Philippe received the message at the park gates, read it by torch-light, and at once set out for Paris, accompanied by Messieurs de Berthois[287], Haymès and Oudart. He wore a tricolour favour in his button-hole: he was going to carry off an old crown from the Royal Furniture Repository.

On his arrival at the Palais-Royal, M. le Duc d'Orléans sent his compliments to M. de La Fayette.

The deputation of twelve members of the Chamber of Deputies appeared at the Palais-Royal. They asked the Prince if he accepted the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom; he made an embarrassed reply:

"I have come amongst you to share your dangers.... I have need of reflection. I must consult various persons. The dispositions of Saint-Cloud are not at all hostile; the King's presence lays duties upon me."

[Sidenote: Eating his words.]

Thus replied Louis-Philippe. He was made to eat his words, as he expected: after withdrawing for half-an-hour, he reappeared, bearing a proclamation by virtue of which he accepted the functions of Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom. The proclamation ended with this declaration:

"The Charter will henceforward be a reality!"

The proclamation was taken to the Elective Chamber and received with that fifty-year-old revolutionary enthusiasm: another proclamation was issued in reply, drawn up by M. Guizot[288]. The deputies returned to the Palais-Royal; the Prince became affected, accepted afresh, and could not help bewailing the deplorable circumstances which forced him to be Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom.

Stunned by the blows that had been struck at it, the Republic tried to defend itself; but its real head, General La Fayette, had almost abandoned it. He delighted in the concert of adoration that reached him from every side; he greedily inhaled the perfume of revolution; he was enchanted at the idea that he was the arbiter of France, that he was able, by stamping the earth with his foot, to cause a republic or a monarchy to spring up, as he pleased; he loved to lull himself in the uncertainty which pleases minds that dread conclusions, because an instinct warns them that they cease to be anything when the facts are accomplished.

The other republican leaders had ruined themselves in advance by their several works: the praises of the Terror had reminded Frenchmen of 1793 and caused them to recoil. The re-establishment of the National Guard at the same time killed the principle or the power of insurrection in the combatants of July. M. de La Fayette did not perceive that, in dreaming of the Republic, he had armed three millions of fighting men against it.

[Sidenote: The D'Orléans pedigree.]

Be this as it may, ashamed of being duped so soon, the younger men made some show of resistance. They replied by proclamations and posters to the proclamations and posters of the Duc d'Orléans. He was told that, if the deputies had so far lowered themselves as to beseech him to accept the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom, the Chamber of Deputies, elected under an aristocratic law, had no right to manifest the will of the people. It was proved to Louis-Philippe that he was the son of Louis Philippe Joseph; that Louis Philippe Joseph was the son of Louis Philippe[289]; that Louis Philippe was the son of Louis[290], who was the son of Philip II.[291] the Regent; that Philip II. was the son of Philip I.[292] who was the brother of Louis XIV.: therefore Louis-Philippe d'Orléans was a Bourbon and Capet, not a Valois. M. Laffitte nevertheless continued to look upon him as belonging to the dynasty of Charles IX. and Henry III., and said:

"Thiers knows all about it."

Later, the Lointier gathering[293] protested that the nation was in arms to maintain its rights by force. The central committee of the 12th Ward declared that the people had not been consulted on the method of its Constitution, that the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers, holding their powers from Charles X., had fallen with him and could not, in consequence, represent the nation; that the Provisional Government must remain in permanence, under the presidency of La Fayette, until a Constitution had been discussed and fixed as the fundamental basis of government.

On the morning of the 30th, there was a question of proclaiming the Republic. A few determined men threatened to kill the Municipal Commission if it did not keep the power in its hands. Did they not also blame the House of Peers? They were furious at its audacity. The audacity of the House of Peers! Surely this must have been the last outrage and the last injustice which it expected to receive at the hands of public opinion!

A plan was formed: twenty of the most fiery young men were to lie in wait in a little street running into the Quai de la Ferraille and fire on Louis-Philippe when he went from the Palais-Royal to the Hôtel de Ville. They were stopped and told that they would at the same time be killing Laffitte, Pajol and Benjamin Constant. Lastly it was proposed to kidnap the Duc d'Orléans and put him on board ship at Cherbourg: a strange meeting, if Charles X. and Philip had come together again in the same port, on the same vessel, one dispatched to a foreign shore by the middle class, the other by the Republicans!

The Duc d'Orléans, having made up his mind to go to have his title confirmed by the tribunes of the Hôtel de Ville, went down into the court-yard of the Palais-Royal, surrounded by eighty-nine deputies in caps, in round hats, in dress-coats, in frock-coats. The royal candidate mounted a white horse; he was followed by Benjamin Constant, tossed about in a chair by two Savoyards. Messieurs Méchin[294] and Viennet[295], covered with dust and perspiration, walked between the white horse of the future monarch and the barrow of the gouty deputy, quarrelling with the two porters to make them keep the required distance. A half-drunken drummer beat the drum at the head of the procession. Four ushers served as lictors. The more zealous deputies bellowed:

"Long live the Duc d'Orléans!"

[Sidenote: Philip at the Palais-Royal.]

Around the Palais-Royal these cries met with some response; but, as the troop approached the Hôtel de Ville, the spectators became derisive or silent. Philip threw himself about on his triumphal steed and constantly took shelter beneath the buckler of M. Laffitte, from whom he received a few patronizing words on the way. He smiled to General Gérard, made signs of intelligence to M. Viennet and M. Méchin, and begged the crown of the people with his hat adorned with a yard of tricolour ribbon, putting out his hand to whosoever on his way was willing to drop an alms into it. The strolling monarchy reached the Place de Grève, where it was greeted with cries of "The Republic for ever!"

When the royal electoral matter made its way inside the Hôtel de Ville, the postulant was received with more threatening murmurs: a few zealous servants who shouted his name were punched for their pains. He entered the Throne Room; here were crowded the wounded and fighters of the Three Days: a general shout of "No more Bourbons! Long live La Fayette!" shook the rafters of the hall. The Prince appeared embarrassed. M. Viennet, on behalf of M. Laffitte, read the declaration of the Deputies; it was heard in profound silence. The Duc d'Orléans spoke a few words of adhesion. Then M. Dubourg said roughly to Philip:

"You have taken serious engagements. If ever you fail to keep them, we are the people to remind you of them." Whereupon the future King replied, with great emotion:

"Sir, I am an honest man."

M. de La Fayette, seeing the growing uncertainty of the assembly, suddenly took it in his head to abdicate the Presidency: he handed the Duc d'Orléans a tricolour flag, stepped out on the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville, and embraced the Prince before the eyes of the gaping crowd, while the Duke waved the national flag. La Fayette's republican kiss made a king: a curious outcome of the whole career of the "hero of the Two Worlds!"

And then, rub-a-dub! the litter of Benjamin Constant and the white horse of Louis-Philippe went home again, half hooted, half blessed, from the political factory on the Grève to the Palais-Marchand.

"That same day," says M. Louis Blanc, "and not far from the Hôtel de Ville, a wherry moored at the foot of the Morgue and surmounted by a black flag, received corpses which were lowered in barrows. These corpses were piled up in heaps and covered with straw; and the crowd, which had gathered along the parapets of the Seine, looked on in silence[296]."

Speaking of the States of the League and the making of a king, Palma-Cayet[297] exclaims:

"I pray you to picture to yourselves what answer could have made that little goodman Master Matthieu Delaunay and M. Boucher, curate of Saint-Benoît, and any other of that condition to one who should have told them that they must be employed to instal a king in France to their fancy?... True Frenchmen have always held in contempt that form of electing kings, which makes them masters and servants together."

Philip had not come to the end of his trials; he had many more hands to shake, many more embraces to receive: he still had to blow very many kisses, to bow very low to the passers-by, to humour the crowd by coming many times on the balcony of the Tuileries to sing the Marseillaise.

A certain number of Republicans had met, on the morning of the 31st, at the office of the _National_: when they knew that the Duc d'Orléans had been appointed Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, they wished to know the opinions of the man destined to become King in spite of them. They were taken to the Palais-Royal by M. Thiers: there were Messieurs Bastide, Thomas, Joubert[298], Cavaignac[299], Marchais, Degousée[300], and Guinard. The Prince at first said many fine things to them about liberty:

"You are not King yet," retorted Bastide; "listen to the truth: soon you will have no lack of flatterers."

"Your father," added Cavaignac, "was a regicide like mine; that separates you a little from the others."

[Sidenote: Embraces La Fayette.]

Followed mutual congratulations on the regicide, accompanied nevertheless by a judicious remark from Philip, to the effect that there are things which we should remember in order not to imitate them.

Some Republicans who were not at the meeting at the _National_ entered. M. Trélat said to Philip:

"The people is the master; your functions are provisional; the people must express its wish: do you consult it, yes or no?"

M. Thiers interrupted this dangerous speech by tapping M. Thomas on the shoulder and saying:

"Monseigneur, have we not a fine colonel here?"

"That is true," answered Louis-Philippe.

"What is he talking about?" they exclaimed. "Does he take us for a band that has come to sell itself?"

And on every side rose contradictory phrases:

"It's a tower of Babel! And that's what they call a Citizen King! The Republic? You had better govern with Republicans!"

And M. Thiers exclaiming:

"Here's a fine embassy I've undertaken!"

Then M. de La Fayette came down to the Palais-Royal: the citizen was nearly stifled under the embraces of his King. The whole house was ready to die.

Men in jackets were at the posts of honour, men in caps in the drawing-rooms, men in smocks sat down to table with the Princes and Princesses; in the council-chamber there were chairs, but no arm-chairs; all spoke who would; Louis-Philippe, seated between M. de La Fayette and M. Laffitte, their arms entwined round each other's shoulders, beamed expansively with equality and happiness.

I would have liked to employ more gravity in my description of those scenes which produced a great revolution, or, to speak more correctly, of those scenes by which the transformation of the world will be hastened: but I saw them; deputies who acted in them could not help showing a certain confusion, when they told me how, on the 31st of July, they went to forge--a king.

To Henry IV., before he became a Catholic, men raised objections which did not degrade him and which were measured by the level of the Throne itself: they told him that "St. Louis had been canonized, not at Geneva, but in Rome; that, if the King were not a Catholic, he would not hold the first place among the kings of Christendom; that it was not seemly that the King should pray in one wise and his people in another; that the King could not be crowned at Rheims, nor buried at Saint-Denis, if he were not a Catholic."

What was the objection raised against Philip before his final election? Men objected that he was not "patriot" enough.

To-day, when the Revolution is consummated, men take offense if one dare remind them of what took place at the start; they fear to diminish the solidity of the position they have taken up, and whosoever does not find in the origin of the incipient fact the gravity of the accomplished fact is a traducer.

When a dove descended to bring the Holy Oil to Clovis; when the long-haired kings were raised upon a buckler; when St. Louis, in his premature virtue, trembled at his coronation while pronouncing the oath to employ his authority only for the glory of God and the welfare of his people; when Henry IV., after his entry into Paris, went to prostrate himself at Notre-Dame, and men saw, or thought they saw, on his right, a beautiful child who defended him and who was taken to be his guardian angel: I conceive that the diadem was a sacred thing; the Oriflamme rested in the tabernacles of Heaven. But, now that a sovereign, on a public square, with hair cut short and hands tied behind his back, has lowered his head beneath the blade to the sound of the drum; now that another sovereign, surrounded by the rabble, has gone to beg votes for his "election," to the sound of the same drum, on another public square: who keeps the smallest illusion touching the crown? Who believes that that soiled and battered monarchy can still impose upon the world? What man, feeling his heart beat ever so little, would swallow power in that cup of shame and disgust which Philip emptied at one draught without a qualm? European monarchy could have continued its life, if in France they had preserved the parent monarchy, the daughter of a saint and of a great man; but her seed has been dispersed: nothing will be born of her again.

You have seen the Monarchy of the Grève march dusty and breathless under the tricolour flag, in the midst of its insolent friends: see now the Royalty of Rheims retire, with measured steps, in the midst of its almoners and its guards, walking in accordance with the exactest etiquette, hearing no word but words of respect, revered even by those who detested it. The soldier, little though he esteemed it, died for it; the White Flag, laid upon its bier before being folded away for ever, said to the wind:

"Salute me: I was at Ivry; I saw Turenne die; the English knew me at Fontenoy; I made liberty triumph under Washington; I have delivered Greece, and I still wave from the walls of Algiers!"

[Sidenote: The Duc D'Angoulême.]

On the 31st, at daybreak, at the very hour when the Duc d'Orléans, after arriving in Paris, was preparing to accept the Lieutenant-generalship, the servants at Saint-Cloud came to the bivouac on the Sèvres Bridge, saying that they were discharged and that the King had left at half-past three in the morning. The soldiers became excited, but grew calm again when the Dauphin appeared: he rode up on horse-back, as though to carry them with him by one of those phrases which lead the French to death or victory; he stopped in front of the ranks, stammered a few sentences, turned short, and went back to the Palace. It was not courage that failed him, but speech. The miserable education of our Princes of the Elder Branch, since Louis XIV., rendered them incapable of supporting a contradiction, of expressing themselves like everybody else, and of mixing with the rest of mankind.

Meanwhile, the heights of Sèvres and the terraces of Bellevue were crowned with men of the people: a few musket-shots were exchanged. The captain commanding the advance-guard on the Sèvres Bridge went over to the enemy; he took a piece of cannon and a part of his soldiers to the bands that had gathered on the Point-du-Jour Road. Then the Parisians and the Guards agreed that no hostilities should take place until the evacuation of Saint-Cloud and of Sèvres was effected. The retiring movement began; the Swiss were hemmed in by the inhabitants of Sèvres and flung away their arms, although they were almost at once extricated by the Lancers, whose lieutenant-colonel was wounded. The troops passed through Versailles, where the National Guard had been on duty since the preceding day, with La Rochejacquelein's Grenadiers, the first under the tricolour, the second with the white cockade. Madame la Dauphine arrived from Vichy and joined the Royal Family at Trianon, the favourite residence of Marie-Antoinette. At Trianon, M. de Polignac took leave of his master.

It has been said that Madame la Dauphine was opposed to the Ordinances. The only way to judge kings correctly is to consider them in their essence: the plebeian will always be on the side of liberty; the prince will always lean towards power. We must ascribe this to them as neither a crime nor a merit: it is their nature. Madame la Dauphine would probably have wished that the Ordinances had appeared at a more opportune moment, after better precautions had been taken to ensure their success; but in reality they pleased her and were bound to please her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry was delighted with them. Those two Princesses believed that the Royalty, once its own master, would be free from the shackles which representative government fastens to the sovereign's feet.

One is astonished, in the events of July, not to meet with the Diplomatic Body, which was only too much consulted by the Court and which interfered too much in our business.

There was twice a question of the foreign ambassadors in our last troubles. A man was arrested at the barriers and the packet of which he was the bearer sent to the Hôtel de Ville: it was a dispatch from M. de Lœwenhielm[301] to the King of Sweden. M. Baude sent back the dispatch unopened to the Swedish Legation. Lord Stuart's[302] correspondence fell into the hands of the popular leaders and was similarly returned without being opened, which did wonders in London. Lord Stuart, like all his fellow-countrymen, adored disorder in foreign countries: with him, diplomacy was police-duty, dispatches reports. He liked me well enough when I was Foreign Minister, because I treated him without ceremony and because my door was always open to him; he used to come to me at all hours, in boots, dirty, with disordered dress, after visiting the boulevards and the ladies, whom he paid badly and who called him "Stuart."

I had conceived diplomacy on a new plan: having nothing to conceal, I spoke aloud; I would have shown my dispatches to the first-comer, because I had no project for the glory of France which I was not determined to accomplish in spite of all opposition.

I have said a hundred times to Sir Charles Stuart, laughing, and I meant what I said:

"Do not pick a quarrel with me: if you throw down the gauntlet to me, I shall pick it up. France has never made war on you with a proper understanding of your position; that is why you have beaten us: but don't rely on this[303]."

[Sidenote: Lord Stuart de Rothesay.]

Lord Stuart, therefore, beheld our "troubles of July" with all that good nature which rejoices over our misfortunes. But the members of the Diplomatic Body hostile to the popular cause had more or less urged Charles X. in the direction of the Ordinances; and yet, when they appeared, the ambassadors did nothing to save the Sovereign. If M. Pozzo di Borgo[304] showed some anxiety concerning a _coup d'État_, this was on behalf of neither the King nor the people.

Two things are certain:

First, the Revolution attacked the treaties of the Quadruple Alliance: the France of the Bourbons formed part of that alliance; the Bourbons could not, therefore, be violently dispossessed without endangering the new political right of Europe.

Secondly, in a monarchy, the foreign legations are not accredited to the government, but to the monarch. The strict duty of those legations, therefore, was to gather round Charles X. and to attend on him so long as he remained on French soil.

Is it not singular that the only ambassador to whom this idea occurred should have been the representative of Bernadotte, of a King who did not belong to the old families of sovereigns? M. de Lœwenhielm was on the point of bringing the Baron de Werther[305] over to his opinion, when M. Pozzo di Borgo opposed a measure which his credentials prescribed and honour demanded.

Had the Diplomatic Body gone to Saint-Cloud, Charles X.'s position would have been different: the partisans of the Legitimacy in the Elective Chamber would have gained a strength which they lacked at first; the fear of a war would have alarmed the working class; the idea of preserving peace by keeping Henry V.[306] would have drawn a considerable mass of the population over to the royal infant's party.

M. Pozzo di Borgo stood aloof so as not to compromise his securities on the Bourse or at his bankers', and especially not to expose his place. He played at five per cent, on the corpse of the Capetian Legitimacy, a corpse which will communicate death to the other living kings. He will not fail, some time hence, to try, according to custom, to pass off this irreparable fault, due to personal interest, as a profound combination.

Ambassadors left too long at the same Court adopt the manners of the country in which they reside. Charmed to live in the midst of honours, no longer seeing things as they are, they are afraid of passing in their dispatches a truth which might bring about a change in their position. It is, in fact, a different thing to be Esterhazy[307], Werther, Pozzo in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or to be Their Excellencies the Ambassadors to the Court of France. It has been said that M. Pozzo bore a grudge against Louis XVIII. and Charles X. in the matter of the Blue Ribbon and the peerage. They were wrong not to satisfy him; he had rendered services to the Bourbons, for hatred of his fellow-countryman[308], Bonaparte. But if, at Ghent, he decided the question of the throne, by provoking the sudden departure of Louis XVIII. for Paris, he can now boast that, by preventing the Diplomatic Body from doing its duty in the Days of July, he has helped to throw from the head of Charles X. the crown which he assisted in placing on the brow of his brother.

[Sidenote: The diplomatic body.]

I have long been of opinion that diplomatic bodies, born in centuries subject to a different law of nations, are no longer in keeping with the new society: public governments, easy communications bring about that nowadays Cabinets are in a position to treat direct or simply through the intermediary of their consular agents, whose number should be increased and their condition improved: for, at this hour, Europe is an industrial continent. Titled spies, with exorbitant pretensions, who meddle with everything to give themselves an importance which they cannot retain, serve only to disturb the Cabinets to which they are accredited and to feed their masters with illusions. Charles X., on his side, was wrong not to invite the Diplomatic Body to join his Court; but what he saw seemed to him a dream: he went from one surprise to the other. It was thus that he did not send for M. le Duc d'Orléans; for, thinking himself in danger only from the side of the Republic, the risk of an usurpation never entered his thoughts.

Charles X. set out in the evening for Rambouillet with the Princesses and M. le Duc de Bordeaux. The new role played by M. le Duc d'Orléans gave rise to the first ideas of abdication in the King's head. Monsieur le Dauphin remained with the rear-guard, but did not mix with the soldiers; at Trianon he ordered what remained of wine and food to be distributed among them.

At a quarter past eight in the evening, the different corps set forward. There the fidelity of the 5th Light Regiment expired. Instead of following the movement, it returned to Paris: its colours were brought to Charles X., who refused to accept them, as he had refused to accept those of the 50th.

The brigades were all confused, the several arms intermingled; the cavalry outpaced the infantry and halted separately. At midnight, on the 31st of July, a stop was made at Trappes. The Dauphin slept at a house at the back of the village.

The next morning, the 1st of August, he started for Rambouillet, leaving the troops bivouacked at Trappes. These broke up camp at eleven. A few soldiers who had gone to buy bread in the hamlets were massacred.

On its arrival at Rambouillet, the army was cantoned round the Palace.

During the night of the 1st of August, three regiments of heavy cavalry went back to their old garrisons. It is believed that General Bordesoulle[309], commanding the heavy cavalry of the Guard, had made his capitulation at Versailles. The 2nd Grenadiers also went off on the morning of the 2nd, after sending in its colours to the King. The Dauphin met these deserting Grenadiers; they formed in line to do honour to the Prince, and continued their road. Strange mixture of disloyalty and good manners! In this three days' revolution, no one betrayed any passion; each acted according to the idea he had formed of his rights or his duties: the rights conquered, the duties fulfilled, no enmity and no affection remained. The one feared lest the rights should carry him too far, the other lest the duties should exceed their limits. Perhaps it has only once happened, and perhaps it will never happen again, that a people stopped within reach of its victory, and that soldiers who had defended a King, so long as he seemed to wish to fight, returned their standards to him before abandoning him. The Ordinances had released the people from its oath; the retreat, on the field of battle, released the grenadier from his flag.

Charles X. retiring, the Republicans withdrawing, there was nothing to prevent the Elected Monarchy from moving forward. The provinces, always sheep-like and the slaves of Paris, at each movement of the telegraph and at each tricolour flag perched on the top of a diligence, shouted, "Long live Philip!" or, "The Revolution for ever!"

The opening of the session being fixed for the 3rd of August, the Peers repaired to the Chamber of Deputies: I went there, for everything was as yet provisional. There another act of melodrama was performed: the throne remained empty, and the Anti-king sat down beside it, as who should say the Lord Chancellor opening a session of the British Parliament, in the Sovereign's absence.

Philip spoke of the painful necessity in which he had found himself of accepting the Lieutenant-generalship to save us all, of the revision of Article XIV. of the Charter, of the feeling for liberty which he, Philip, bore in his heart and which he was about to pour over us, together with peace over Europe: a hocus-pocus of speech and constitution repeated at each phase of our history since the last half-century. But attention grew very lively when the Prince made the following declaration:

[Sidenote: Abdication of Charles X.]

"Peers and deputies,

"So soon as the two Chambers are constituted, I will communicate to you the act of abdication of His Majesty King Charles X. By the same act, Louis Antoine of France, the Dauphin, likewise renounces his rights. This act was placed in my hands at eleven o'clock last night, the 2nd of August. This morning I have ordered it to be deposited in the archives of the House of Peers and to be inserted in the official part of the _Moniteur_."

By a contemptible trick and a cowardly omission, the Duc d'Orléans here suppressed the name of Henry V., in whose favour the two Kings had abdicated. If, at that time, every Frenchman could have been individually consulted, it is probable that the majority would have pronounced in favour of Henry V.; even a section of the Republicans would have accepted him, giving him La Fayette for a mentor. Had the germ of the Legitimacy remained in France and the two old Kings gone to end their days in Rome, none of the difficulties which surround an usurpation and render it suspicious to the various parties would have existed. The adoption of the Younger Branch of Bourbon was not only a danger, it was a political solecism: New France is Republican; she does not want a king, at least she does not want a king of the old dynasty. A few years more, and we shall see what will become of our liberties and what that peace will be which is to gladden the world. If we may judge of the future conduct of the new personage elected by what we know of his character, it is safe to presume that this Prince will think that the only way to preserve his monarchy is by oppression at home and grovelling abroad.

The real wrong done by Louis-Philippe is not that he accepted the crown, an act of ambition of which there are thousands of examples and which attacks only a political institution; his true crime is that he was a faithless guardian, that he "robbed the child and the orphan," a crime for which the Scriptures do not contain enough curses: now moral justice (let who will call it fatality or Providence, I call it the inevitable consequences of evil-doing) has never failed to punish the infractions of moral law.

Philip, his government, all that order of impossible and contradictory things will perish, within a period more or less delayed by fortuitous circumstances, by complications of internal and external interests, by the apathy and corruption of individuals, by the levity of men's minds, the indifference and effacement of their characters; but, whatever the duration of the present system may be, it will never be long enough for the Orleans Branch to take deep root.

Charles X., apprized of the progress of the Revolution, possessing nothing in his age or his character fitted to stem that progress, thought that he was warding off the blow struck at his House by abdicating together with his son, as Philip announced to the Deputies. On the 1st of August he wrote a line approving of the opening of the session and, counting on the sincere attachment of his cousin the Duc d'Orléans, he in his turn appointed him Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom. He went further on the 2nd, for he wanted nothing more than to take ship, and he asked for commissaries to protect him as far as Cherbourg. These apparitors were not at once received by the Military Household. Bonaparte also had commissaries as guards: the first time Russian, the second French; but he had not asked for them.

[Sidenote: Letter from Charles to Philip.]

Here is Charles X.'s letter:

"RAMBOUILLET, 2 _August_ 1830.

"COUSIN,

"I am too deeply distressed at the evils with which my people are afflicted and threatened not to seek the means of removing them. I have therefore resolved to abdicate the crown in favour of my grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux.

"The Dauphin, who shares my sentiments, also renounces his rights in favour of his nephew.

"You will, therefore, in your capacity of Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, cause the accession of Henry V. to the crown to be proclaimed. You will take all the other measures which concern you, for regulating the forms of government during the minority of the new King. I here confine myself to the communication of these arrangements, as the means of avoiding yet many more evils.

"You will communicate my intentions to the Diplomatic Body, and you will take the earliest opportunity of making known to me the proclamation by which my grandson is recognised as King, under the title of Henry V.[310]...

"I renew to you, cousin, the assurance of the sentiments with which I am

"Your affectionate cousin,

"CHARLES."

If M. le Duc d'Orléans had been capable of emotion or remorse, would not this signature, "Your affectionate cousin," have struck him to the heart? So little doubt had they at Rambouillet of the efficacy of the abdications that the young Prince was being made ready for his journey: his ægis, the tricolour cockade, was already fashioned by the hands of the most zealous promoters of the Ordinances. Suppose that Madame la Duchesse de Berry had suddenly set out with her son and appeared in the Chamber of Deputies at the moment when M. le Duc d'Orléans was delivering his opening speech, two chances remained: dangerous chances, but, at least, the child removed to Heaven would not have dragged out days of misery on foreign soil.

My counsels, my prayers, my cries were powerless; I asked in vain for Marie-Caroline: the mother of Bayard, as he was preparing to quit the paternal castle, "wept," says the _Loyal Serviteur_:

"The good gentle woman came out from the back of the tower, and sent for her son, to whom she spake these words:

"'Pierre, my friend, be sweet and courteous, putting from you all pride; be humble and serviceable to all men; be loyal in deeds and words; be helpful to poor widows and orphans, and God will recompense you....'

"Then the good ladye drew out of her sleeve a little purse in which were only six crowns in gold and one in small silver, the which she gave to her son."

The knight without fear and without reproach rode away with six golden crowns in a little purse to become the bravest and most renowned of captains. Henry, who perhaps has not six gold crowns, will have very different combats to wage; he will have to fight misfortune, a difficult champion to throw. Let us glorify the mothers who give such tender and good lessons to their sons! Blessed, then, be you, my mother, from whom I derive all that may have honoured and disciplined my life!

Forgive me for all these recollections; but perhaps the tyranny of my memory, by introducing the past into the present, takes from the latter a part of its wretchedness.

The three commissaries deputed to Charles X. were Messieurs de Schonen, Odilon Barrot and Marshal Maison. They were sent back by the military posts, and started to return to Paris. A wave of the populace carried them back to Rambouillet.

The rumour spread, on the evening of the 2nd, that Charles X. refused to leave Rambouillet before his grand-son was recognised. A multitude gathered in the Champs-Élysées on the morning of the 3rd, shouting:

"To Rambouillet! To Rambouillet! Not one of the Bourbons must escape from it!"

There were rich men mixed among these groups, but, when the moment came, they allowed the "rabble" to set out without them. General Pajol placed himself at their head, taking Colonel Jacqueminot[311] as his chief of staff. The returning commissaries, meeting the scouts of this column, turned on their steps and were then admitted to Rambouillet. The King questioned them on the strength of the insurgents and then, withdrawing, sent for Maison, who owed him his fortune and his marshal's baton:

"Maison, I ask you on your honour as a soldier, is what the commissaries have told me the truth?"

The marshal replied:

"They have told you only half the truth."

[Sidenote: Charles X. at Rambouillet.]

There remained at Rambouillet, on the 3rd of August, 3500 men of the Infantry of the Guard, and four regiments of Light Cavalry, forming twenty squadrons and consisting of 2000 men. The Military Household, Body-guards and so on amounted, horse and foot, to 1300 men: in all, 8800 men and seven batteries consisting of 42 pieces of artillery with their teams. At ten o'clock at night, the signal was sounded to saddle; the whole camp started for Maintenon, Charles X. and his Family marching in the midst of the funeral column, which was scarce lighted by the veiled moon.

And before whom were they retreating? Before a band almost unarmed, arriving in omnibuses, in cabs, in traps from Versailles and Saint-Cloud. General Pajol thought that he was quite lost when he was obliged to place himself at the head of that multitude[312], which, after all, did not amount to more than 15,000 men, with the adjunction of the newly-arrived Rouennese. Half of this band remained on the roads. A few exalted, valiant and generous young men, mingled with this troop, would have sacrificed themselves; the rest would probably have dispersed. In the fields of Rambouillet, in the flat open country, they would have had to face the fire of the Line and of the Artillery; by all appearances, a victory would have been won. Between the people's victory in Paris and the King's victory at Rambouillet, negociations would have been entered upon.

What! Among so many officers, was there not one with sufficient resolution to seize the command in the name of Henry V.? For, after all, Charles X. and the Dauphin were Kings no longer.

If they did not wish to fight, why did they not retire to Chartres? There, they would have been out of the reach of the Paris populace. Or, better still, to Tours, supported by the Legitimist provinces? Had Charles X. remained in France, the greater part of the army would have remained loyal. The camps at Boulogne and Lunéville were raised and were marching to his aid. My nephew, the Comte Louis, was bringing his regiment, the 4th Light Infantry, which left the ranks only on hearing of the retreat from Rambouillet. M. de Chateaubriand was reduced to escorting the Monarch on a pony to his place of embarkation. If, repairing to some town, protected against a first surprise, Charles X. had convoked the two Chambers, more than half of those Chambers would have obeyed. Casimir Périer, General Sébastiani and a hundred others had waited, had struggled against the tricolour cockade; they dreaded the dangers of a popular revolution: what am I saying? The Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, summoned by the King and not seeing the battle won, would have stolen away from his partisans and conformed to the royal injunction. The Diplomatic Body, which did not do its duty, would have done it then by placing itself around the Sovereign. The Republic, installed in Paris amidst all the disorders, would not have lasted a month in the face of a regular constitutional government, established elsewhere. Never has the game been lost with so fine a hand, and, when a game is lost in this way, there is no revenge possible: go talk of liberty to the citizens and of honour to the soldiers after the Ordinances of July and the retreat from Saint-Cloud!

The time will perhaps come, when a new form of society will have taken the place of the present social order, when war will appear a monstrous absurdity, when its very principle will no longer be understood; but we have not reached that stage yet. In armed quarrels, there are philanthropists who distinguish between the species and who are prepared to swoon away at the mere word of civil war:

"Fellow-countrymen killing one another! Brothers, fathers, sons, face to face!"

All this is very sad, no doubt; and yet a nation has often been regenerated and acquired new vigour in intestine discords. None has ever perished by a civil war; many have disappeared in foreign wars. See what Italy was, at the time of her divisions, and see what she is now. It is a deplorable thing to be obliged to lay waste your neighbour's property, to see your own home blooded by that same neighbour; but, frankly, is it much more humane to slay a family of German peasants whom you do not know, who have never had a discussion with you of any kind, whom you rob, whom you kill without remorse, whose wives and children you dishonour with a safe conscience, because this is war? Whatever men may say, civil wars are less unjust, less revolting and more natural than foreign wars, except when the latter are undertaken to save the national independence. Civil wars are based at least upon individual outrages, upon admitted and recognised aversions; they are duels with seconds, in which the adversaries know why they are wielding their swords. If the passions do not justify the evil, they excuse it, they explain it, they give a reason for its existence. How is foreign war justified? Generally, nations cut each other's throats because a king is bored, because an ambitious man wishes to rise, because a minister seeks to supplant a rival. The time has come to do justice on those old common-places of sentimentalism, better suited to poets than historians: Thucydides, Cæsar, Livy are content to utter a word of sorrow and pass on.

[Sidenote: Thoughts on Civil war.]

Civil war, in spite of its calamities, has only one real danger: if the contending factions have recourse to the foreigner, or if the foreigner, profiting by the divisions of a people, attack it; such a position might result in conquest. Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, Constantinopolitan Greece, in our own days Poland offer examples which we must not forget. Nevertheless, during the League, the two parties calling Spaniards and English, Italians and Germans to their aid, the latter counter-balanced each other and did not disturb the equilibrium which the French in arms maintained among themselves.

Charles X. was wrong to employ bayonets in support of his Ordinances; his ministers have no justification to offer, whether they were acting in obedience or not, for having shed the blood of the people and the soldiers, whom no hatred divided, in the same way as the theoretical Terrorists would gladly reproduce the system of the Terror, when no Terror exists. But Charles X. was also wrong not to accept war when, after he had yielded on every point, it was brought to his door. He had no right, after placing the diadem on the brow of his grandson, to say to that new Joas:

"I have made you ascend the throne, to drag you into exile, so that, wretched and banished, you may bear the weight of my years, my proscription and my sceptre."

He was not right at the same moment to give Henry V. a crown and to rob him of France. When they made him King, they had condemned him to die on the soil in which lie mingled the dust of St. Louis and that of Henry IV.

For the rest, after this ebullition of my blood, I return to my reason, and I see in these things no more than the accomplishment of the destinies of humanity. The Court, had it triumphed by force of arms, would have destroyed the public liberties; they would none the less have crushed it one day; but it would have retarded the development of society for some years; all that had taken a wide view of the Monarchy would have been persecuted by the re-established Congregation. In the last result, events have followed the trend of civilization. God makes men powerful according to His secret designs: He gives them faults which undo them when they must be undone, because He does not wish that qualities ill-applied by a false intelligence should oppose themselves to the decrees of His Providence.

The retirement of the Royal Family reduced my part to myself. I no longer thought of what I should be called upon to say in the House of Peers. To write was impossible: if the attack had come from the enemies of the Crown; if Charles X. had been overthrown by a conspiracy from the outside, I should have taken up my pen and, if they had left me independence of thought, I should have undertaken to rally an immense party around the ruins of the throne; but the attack had come from the Crown itself; the Ministers had violated both liberal principles; they had made the Royalty commit perjury, not intentionally, no doubt, but in fact; through this very act they had taken away my strength. What could I put forward in favour of the Ordinances? How could I have continued to extol the sincerity, the candour, the chivalry of the Legitimate Monarchy? How could I have said that it was the strongest guarantee of our interests, our laws and our independence? The champion of the old Royalty, I had been stripped of my arms by that Royalty and left naked to mine enemies.

I was therefore quite astonished when, reduced to this state of weakness, I saw myself sought out by the new Royalty. Charles X. has disdained my services; Philip made an effort to attach me to himself. First, M. Arago spoke to me, in lofty and lively terms, on behalf of Madame Adélaïde; next the Comte Anatole de Montesquiou came one morning to Madame Récamier's and met me there. He told me that Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans and M. le Duc d'Orléans would be delighted to see me, if I would go to the Palais-Royal. They were at that time engaged upon the declaration which was to transform the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom into the Royalty. Perhaps H.R.H. had thought it well to try to weaken my opposition before. I pronounced myself. He may also have thought that I looked upon myself as released by the flight of the three Kings.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse D'Orléans.]

These overtures of M. de Montesquiou's surprised me. However, I did not reject them; for, without flattering myself with hopes of success, I thought that I might utter some useful truths. I went to the Palais-Royal with the lord-in-waiting to the future Queen. I was admitted by the entrance leading out of the Rue de Valois, and found Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans and Madame Adélaïde in their private apartments. I had had the honour of being presented to them before. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans made me sit down beside her, and said to me, off-hand:

"Ah, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, we are very unhappy! If all the parties would only unite together, perhaps we might yet be saved! What do you think of all this?"

"Madame," I replied, "nothing is easier: Charles X. and Monsieur le Dauphin have abdicated; Henry is now the King; Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans is Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom: let him act as Regent during the minority of Henry V., and all is settled."

"But, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, the people are very much excited; we shall fall into anarchy!"

"Madame, may I venture to ask you what are the intentions of Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans? Will he accept the crown, if it is offered to him?"

The two Princesses hesitated to answer. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans replied, after a momentary pause:

"Think, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, of the misfortunes that may happen. All honest men must combine to save us from the Republic. In Rome you might render us such great services, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, or even here, if you do not care to leave France again!"

"Madame is aware of my devotion to the young King and his mother?"

"Ah, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, they have treated you so well!"

"Your Royal Highness would not have me give the lie to my whole life."

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you do not know my niece[313]: she is so frivolous!... Poor Caroline!... I am going to send for M. le Duc d'Orléans: he will persuade you better than I can."

The Princess gave instructions, and Louis-Philippe arrived after a quarter of an hour. He was badly-dressed and looked extremely tired. I rose, and the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom accosted me with:

"Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans must have told you how unhappy we are."

And forthwith he spun me an idyll on the happiness which he enjoyed in the country, on the peaceful life, so much to his liking, which he spent in the midst of his children. I seized the moment of a pause between two strophes to speak in my turn and respectfully to repeat, in almost the same words, what I had said to the two Princesses.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "that is what I should like! How happy I should be to be the guardian and the upholder of that child! I think just as you do, Monsieur de Chateaubriand: to accept the Duc de Bordeaux would certainly be the best thing to do. I fear only that events will prove more than a match for us."

"More than a match for us, Monseigneur? Are you not invested with full powers? Let us go to join Henry V.; summon the Chambers and the army to your side, outside Paris. The mere noise of your departure will cause all this effervescence to subside, and men will seek a shelter under your enlightened and protective power."

While speaking, I watched Philip. My advice put him ill at ease; I read on his face his desire to be King:

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said, without looking at me, "the thing is more difficult than you think; it won't go like that. You do not know the danger in which we stand. A furious band might indulge in the most violent excesses against the Chambers, and we have no one to defend us." This phrase which M. le Duc d'Orléans let fall pleased me, because it supplied me with a peremptory retort:

[Sidenote: My conversation with the Duke.]

"I can conceive that difficulty, Monseigneur, but there is a sure means of removing it. If you do not think that you can join Henry V., as I was suggesting, you can adopt another course. The session is about to open: whatever proposal the Deputies may make first, declare that the present Chamber does not possess the necessary powers (which is the sheer truth) to dispose of the form of government; say that France must be consulted and a new assembly elected with powers _ad hoc_ to decide so important a question. Your Royal Highness will then be placing yourself in the most popular position; the Republican Party, which at this moment constitutes your danger, will extol you to the skies. In the two months that will elapse before the meeting of the new legislature, you will organize the National Guard; all your friends and the friends of the young King will work for you in the provinces. Then let the Deputies come, let the cause which I am defending be publicly pleaded in the tribune. This cause, secretly favoured by yourself, will obtain an immense majority of votes. The moment of anarchy will have passed, and you will have nothing more to fear from the violence of the Republicans. I do not even see that you will have much difficulty in winning General La Fayette and M. Laffitte to your side. What a fine part for you to play, Monseigneur! You can reign for fifteen years in the name of your ward; in fifteen years, the age of rest will have set in for all of us; you will have had the glory, unique in history, of being able to ascend the throne and of leaving it to the lawful heir; at the same time, you will have brought up that child in the enlightenment of the century and you will have made him capable of reigning over France: one of your daughters might one day wield the sceptre with him."

Philip cast his looks vaguely above his head:

"Excuse me, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said; "I left an important deputation to come to talk with you, and I must go back to it. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans will have told you how happy I should be to do what you might wish; but, believe me, it is I alone who am holding back a threatening crowd. If the Royalist Party is not massacred, it owes its life to my efforts."

"Monseigneur," I replied to this statement, so unexpected and so far removed from the subject of our conversation, "I have seen massacres: men who have gone through the Revolution are seasoned. Old soldiers do not allow themselves to be frightened by objects that terrify conscripts."

H.R.H. withdrew, and I went to join my friends:

"Well?" they exclaimed.

"Well, he wants to be King."

"And Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans?"

"She wants to be Queen."

"What did they say to you?"

"One spoke to me of pastorals, the other of the dangers threatening France and of 'poor Caroline's' frivolity; both were good enough to convey to me that I might be of use to them, and neither of them looked me in the face."

Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans wished to see me once more. M. le Duc d'Orléans did not come to take part in this conversation. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans explained herself more clearly on the favours with which Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans proposed to honour me. She was good enough to remind me of what she called my power over public opinion, of the sacrifices which I had made, of the aversion which Charles X. and his family had always shown me, in spite of my services. She told me that, if I wished to go back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H.R.H. would be most pleased to reinstate me in that office; but that perhaps I would prefer to return to Rome, and that she (Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans) would see me take this last course with an extreme pleasure, in the interests of our holy religion.

"Madame," I replied at once, with a certain animation, "I see that Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans' mind is made up, that he has weighed the consequences, that he foresees the years of misery and of various dangers which he will have to pass; I have therefore no more to say. I have not come here to show any lack of respect to the blood of the Bourbons; I owe, besides, nothing but gratitude to Madame's kindness. Leaving on one side, therefore, the main objections, the reasons drawn from principles and events, I beseech Your Royal Highness to consent to listen to what regards myself. You have been good enough to speak to me of what you call my power over public opinion. Well, if this power is real, it is founded only on public esteem; and I should lose this esteem the moment I changed my flag. Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans would think he was gaining support, whereas he would have in his service only a wretched phrase-maker, a perjurer to whose voice none would hearken, a renegade at whom every one would have the right to fling mud and to spit in his face. To the wavering words which he would stammer in favour of Louis-Philippe, they would oppose whole volumes which he had published in favour of the fallen family. Was it not I, Madame, who wrote the pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, the articles on the _Arrivée de Louis XVIII. à Compiègne_, the _Rapport dans le conseil du roi à Gand_, the _Histoire de la vie et de la mort de M. le duc de Berry?_ I doubt if I have written a single page in which the name of my ancient kings does not appear in some connection and in which it is not surrounded with protestations of my love and fidelity: a matter which bears a character of individual attachment the more remarkable inasmuch as Madame knows that I do not believe in kings. At the mere thought of a desertion, the blushes rise to my face; I would go the next day to throw myself into the Seine. I entreat Madame to excuse the animation of my words; I am penetrated with your kindness; I will keep it in profound and grateful remembrance, but you would not wish to dishonour me: pity me, Madame, pity me!"

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle D'Orléans.]

I had remained standing and, bowing, I withdrew. Mademoiselle d'Orléans had not uttered a word. She rose and, as she left the room, said to me:

"I do not pity you, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, I do not pity you!"

I was astonished at these few words and at the emphasis with which they were spoken.

That was my last political temptation; I might have thought myself a just man according to St. Hilary[314], who declares that men are exposed to the attempts of the devil in proportion to their godliness: _Victoria ei est magis, exacta de sanctis._ My refusals were those of a dupe: where is the public that shall judge them? Could I not have taken my place among the men, virtuous sons of the land, who serve the "country" before all things? Unfortunately, I am not a creature of the present and I am not willing to capitulate with fortune. I have nothing in common with Cicero; but his frailty is no excuse: posterity has declined to forgive one great man his moment of weakness for another great man; what would my poor life have been, losing its only possession, its integrity, for Louis-Philippe d'Orléans?

On the evening of the day on which I had this last conversation at the Palais-Royal, I met M. de Sainte-Aulaire[315] at Madame Récamier's. I did not amuse myself by asking him his secret, but he asked me mine. He had just arrived from the country full of the events of which he had read:

"Ah," he cried, "how glad I am to see you! Here's a fine business! I hope that all of us, at the Luxembourg, will do our duty. It would be a curious thing for the Peers to dispose of the crown of Henry IV.! I am quite sure that you will not leave me alone in the tribune."

As my mind was made up, I was very calm; my reply appeared cold to M. de Sainte-Aulaire's ardour. He went away, saw his friends and left me alone in the tribune: long live your light-hearted and frivolous men of intelligence!

The Republican Party was still struggling under the feet of the friends who had betrayed it. On the 6th of August, a deputation of twenty members appointed by the central committee of the twelve wards of Paris appeared in the Chamber of Deputies to present an address of which General Thiard[316] and M. Duris-Dufresne[317] eased the well-meaning deputation. It was said in this address that "the nation could not recognise as a constitutional power either an elective Chamber appointed during the existence and under the influence of the royalty which it has overthrown or an aristocratic Chamber, the institution of which is in direct opposition to the principles that have caused it, the nation, to take up arms; that the central committee of the twelve wards, having granted, as a revolutionary necessity, only a _de facto_ and very provisional power to the present Chamber of Deputies to discuss any measure of urgency, now calls with all its wishes for the free and popular election of mandatories who shall really represent the needs of the people; that the primary assemblies alone can bring about that result. If it were otherwise, the nation would render null and void all that might tend to impede it in the exercise of its rights."

All this was pure reason; but the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom was aspiring to the crown, and the fearful and ambitious were in a hurry to give it to him. The plebeians of to-day wanted a revolution and did not know how to make it; the Jacobins, whom they have taken for their models, would have flung the men of the Palais-Royal and the praters of the two Chambers into the water. M. de La Fayette was reduced to impotent wishes: pleased at having caused the revival of the National Guard, he allowed himself to be tossed like an old swaddling-band by Philip, whose wet-nurse he imagined himself to be; he grew torpid with this felicity. The old general was no more than liberty fallen asleep, as the Republic of 1793 was no more than a death's-head.

The truth is that a truncated Chamber, with no special mandate, had no right whatever to dispose of the crown: it was a Convention expressly called together, formed of the House of Lords and a newly-elected House of Commons, that disposed of the throne of James II. It is also certain that that rump of the Chamber of Deputies, those 221, imbued under Charles X. with the traditions of the hereditary monarchy, brought no disposition fitted to the elective monarchy; they stopped it at its commencement, and forced it to go back to principles of quasi-legitimism. They who forged the sword of the new royalty introduced into the blade a straw which sooner or later will cause it to spring.

[Sidenote: The seventh of August.]

The 7th of August is a memorable day for me; it is the day on which I had the happiness of ending my political career as I had begun it: a happiness rare enough to-day to give reason for rejoicing in it. The declaration of the Chamber of Deputies concerning the vacancy of the throne had been brought to the Chamber of Peers. I went to take my seat, which, was in the highest row of arm-chairs, facing the President. The Peers seemed to me at once busy and depressed. If some bore on their foreheads the pride of their approaching disloyalty, others bore the shame of a remorse to which they lacked the courage to listen. I said to myself, as I watched this sad assembly:

"What! Are they who received the favours of Charles X. in his prosperity going to desert him in his ill-fortune? Will they whose special mission it was to defend the Hereditary Throne, those men of the Court who lived in the King's intimacy, will they betray him? They kept watch at his door at Saint-Cloud; they embraced him at Rambouillet; he clasped their hands in a last farewell: are they going to raise against him those hands, still warm with that last pressure? Is this Chamber, which for fifteen years has resounded with their protestations of devotion, about to hear their perjury? And yet it was for them that Charles X. ruined himself; it was they who drove him towards the Ordinances: they stamped for joy when these appeared and when they thought that they had won in that moment of silence which precedes the fall of the thunder."

These ideas rolled confusedly and sorrowfully through my mind. The peerage had become the triple receptacle of the corruptions of the old Monarchy, the Republic and the Empire. As for the Republicans of 1793, now transformed into senators, and the generals of Bonaparte, I expected of them only what they have always done: they deposed the extraordinary man to whom they owed all, they were going to depose the King who had confirmed them in the benefits and honours with which their first master had loaded them. Let the wind turn, and they will depose the usurper to whom they were preparing to throw the crown.

I ascended the tribune. A deep silence fell: the faces of the peers seemed embarrassed; they all turned sidewards in their arm-chairs and looked down at the floor. With the exception of a few peers who had resolved to retire like myself, none dared to raise his eyes to the level of the tribune.

[Sidenote: My last speech in the Peers.]

I reproduce my speech because it sums up my life and forms my principal title to the esteem of posterity:

"Gentlemen!

"The declaration which has been brought to this Chamber is to me much less complicated than it appears to those of my noble colleagues who profess an opinion different from mine. There is one fact in this declaration which appears to me to govern all the others, or rather to destroy them. Were we under a regular order of things, I should doubtless carefully examine the various changes which it is proposed to make in the Charter. Many of these changes have been proposed by myself. I am surprised only that the reactionary measure regarding the peers created by Charles X. should have been proposed to this Chamber. I shall not be suspected of any fondness for the system by which these 'batches' were created; and you know that, when threatened with them, I combated the very menace: but to make ourselves the judges of our colleagues and to erase whom we please from the list of the peerage, whenever we find ourselves the stronger party, would seem to me to savour of proscription. Do they want to destroy the peerage? Be it so: it better becomes us to surrender our existence than to beg for our lives.

"I reproach myself already for the few words I have uttered on a point which, important as it is, becomes insignificant when merged in the great proposition before us. France is without a guide; and I am now to consider what must be added to or cut away from the masts of a vessel which has lost its rudder! I lay aside, then, whatever is of a secondary interest in the declaration of the Elective Chamber; and, fixing on the single enunciated fact of the vacancy of the throne, whether true or pretended, I advance directly to my object.

"But a previous question ought first to be attended to: if the throne be vacant, we are free to choose the future form of our government.

"Before offering the crown to any individual whatever, it is well to ascertain under what political system the social body is to be constituted. Are we to establish a republic or a new monarchy?

"Does a republic or a new monarchy offer sufficient guarantees to France of strength, durability and repose?

"A republic would first of all have the recollections of the republic itself to contend with. Those recollections are far from being effaced. The time is not yet forgotten when Death made his frightful progress among us, with Liberty and Equality for supporters. If you were plunged again into anarchy, how would you reanimate the Hercules on his rock who alone was able to stifle the monster? In the course of a thousand years, your posterity may see another Napoleon. As for you, you must not expect it.

"Next, in the present state of our manners and of our relations with surrounding governments, the idea of a republic seems to me to be untenable. The first difficulty would be to bring the people of France to an unanimous vote on the subject. What right has the population of Paris to compel the population of Marseilles or any other town to adopt the forms of a republic? Is there to be but one republic, or are we to have twenty or thirty? And are they to be federative or independent? Let us suppose these obstacles to be removed. Let us suppose that there is to be but one republic: can you imagine for a moment, with the habitual familiarity of our manners, that a president, however grave, however talented and however respectable he may be, could remain for a year at the head of the government, without being tempted to retire from it? Ill-protected by the laws and unsupported by previous recollections, insulted and vilified, morning, noon and night, by secret rivals and by the agents of faction, he would not inspire the confidence which property and commerce require; he would possess neither becoming dignity, in treating with foreign governments, nor the power which is indispensable to the maintenance of internal tranquillity. If he resorted to revolutionary measures, the republic would become odious; all Europe would become disturbed and would avail itself of our divisions, first, to foment them and, afterwards, to interfere in the quarrel; and we should again be involved in an interminable struggle. A representative republic is, no doubt, to be the future condition of the world; but its time has not yet come.

"I proceed to the question of a monarchy.

"A king named by the Chambers, or elected by the people, whatever may be done, will always be a novelty. Now I take it for granted that liberty is sought for, especially the liberty of the press, by which and for which the people have obtained so brilliant a triumph. Well, every new monarchy will, sooner or later, be compelled to gag this liberty. Could Napoleon himself admit of it? The offspring of our misfortunes and the slave of our glory, the liberty of the press can exist, in security, only under a government whose roots are deeply seated. A monarchy, the illegitimate offspring of one bloody night, must always have something to fear from the independent expression of public opinion. While this man proclaims republican opinions, and that some other system, is it not to be feared that laws of exception must soon be resorted to, in spite of the anathema against the censorship which has been added to Article VIII. of the Charter?

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"What, then, O friends of regulated liberty, have you gained by the change which is now proposed to you? You must sink, of necessity, either into a republic or into a system of legal slavery. The monarch will be surrounded and overwhelmed by factions, or the monarchy itself swept away by a torrent of democratical enactments.

"In the first intoxication of success, we suppose that everything is easy; we hope to satisfy every exigency, every interest, every humour; we flatter ourselves that every one will lay aside his personal views and vanities; we believe that the superior intelligence and the wisdom of the government will surmount innumerable difficulties; but, at the end of a few months, we find that all our theories have been belied by practice.

"I present to you, gentlemen, only a few of the inconveniences attaching to the formation of a republic or of a new monarchy. If either have its perils, there remained a third course, and one which well deserved a moment's consideration.

"The crown has been trampled on by horrible ministers, who have supported, by murder, their violation of the law; they have trifled with oaths made to Heaven and with laws sworn to on earth.

"Foreigners, who have twice entered Paris without resistance, learn the true cause of your success: you presented yourselves in the name of legal authority. If you were to fly to-day to the assistance of tyranny, do you think that the gates of the capital, of the civilized world, would open as readily before you? The French nation has grown, since your departure, under the influence of constitutional laws; our children of fourteen are giants; our conscripts at Algiers, our schoolboys in Paris have shown you that they are the sons of the conquerors of! Austerlitz, Marengo and Jena: but sons strengthened by all that liberty adds to glory.

"Never was a defense more just and more heroic than that of the people of Paris. They did not rise against the law: so long as the social compact was respected, the people remained peaceable; they bore insults, provocations and threats, without complaining; their property and their blood were the price they owed for the Charter: both have been lavished in abundance.

"But when, after a system of falsehood pursued to the last moment, slavery was suddenly proclaimed; when the conspiracy of folly and hypocrisy burst forth unawares; when the panic of the palace, organized by eunuchs, was prepared as a substitute for the terror of the republic and the iron yoke of the empire, then it was that the people armed themselves with their courage and their intelligence. It was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe freely amid the smoke of gunpowder and that it required more than 'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three last suns that have shone over France. A great crime was committed; it produced the violent explosion of a powerful principle: was it necessary, on account of this crime and the moral and political triumph that resulted from it, to overthrow the established order of things? Let us examine.

"Charles X. and his son have forfeited, or abdicated, the throne, understand it which way you will; but the throne is not vacant: after them came a child, whose innocence ought not to be condemned.

"What blood now rises against him? Will you venture to say that it is that of his father? This orphan, educated in the schools of his country, in the love of a constitutional government and with the ideas of the age, would have become a king well suited to our future wants. The guardian of his youth should have been made to swear to the declaration on which you are about to vote; on attaining his majority, the young Monarch would have renewed his oath. In the meantime, the present King, the actual King would have been M. le Duc d'Orléans, the regent of the kingdom, a Prince who has lived among the people and who knows, that a monarchy, to-day can only exist by consent and reason. This natural arrangement, as it appears to me, would have united the means of reconciliation and would perhaps have saved France those agitations which are the consequence of all violent changes in a State.

"To say that this child, when separated from his masters, would not have had time to forget their very names, before arriving at manhood; to say that he would remain infatuated with certain hereditary dogmas, after a long course of popular education, after the terrible lesson which, in two nights, has hurled two kings from the throne, is, at least, not very reasonable.

"It is not from a feeling of sentimental devotion, nor from a nurse-like affection, transmitted from the swaddling-clothes of Henry IV. to the cradle of the young Henry, that I plead a cause where everything would again turn against me anew if it triumphed. I am not aiming at romance, or chivalry, or martyrdom; I do not believe in the right divine of royalty; but I do believe in the power of facts and of revolutions. I do not even invoke the Charter: I take my ideas from a higher source; I draw them from the sphere of philosophy of the period at which my life terminates: I propose the Duke of Bordeaux merely as a necessity of a purer kind than that which is now in question.

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"I know that, by passing over this child, it is intended to establish the principle of the sovereignty of the people: an absurdity of the old school, which proves that our veteran Democrats have advanced no further in political knowledge than our superannuated Royalists. There is no absolute sovereignty anywhere; liberty does not flow from political right, as was supposed in the eighteenth century; it is derived from natural right, so that it exists under all forms of government; and a monarchy may be free, nay, much more free than a republic: but this is neither the time nor the place to deliver a political lecture.

"I shall content myself with observing that, when the people dispose of thrones, they often dispose also of their own liberty; I shall remark that the principle of an hereditary monarchy, however absurd it may at first appear, has been recognised, in practice, as preferable to that of an elective monarchy. The reasons for this are so obvious that I need not enlarge upon them. You choose one king to-day: who shall hinder you from choosing another to-morrow? The law, you say. The law? And it is you who make it!

"There is still a simpler mode of treating the question: it is to say, we repudiate the Elder Branch of the Bourbons. And why? Because we are victorious; we have triumphed in a just and holy cause; we use a double right of conquest.

"Very well: you proclaim the sovereignty of might. The take good care of this might; for if, in a few months, escapes from you, you will be in a bad position to complain. Such is human nature! The most enlightened and the purest minds do not always rise above success. Those minds were the first to invoke right in opposition to violence; they supported that right with all the superiority of their talent; and, at the very moment when the truth of what they said has been demonstrated by the most abominable abuse of force and by its signal overthrow, the conquerors recur to those arms they have broken! They will find them to be dangerous weapons, which will wound their own hands without serving their cause.

"I have carried the war into my enemies' camp; I have not gone to bivouac in the past under the old banner of the dead, a banner which has not been inglorious, but which droops by the flag-staff that supports it, because no breath of life is there to raise it. Were I to move the dust of thirty-five Capets, I should not draw from it an argument which should be as much as listened to. The idolatry of a name is abolished; monarchy is no longer a tenet of religious belief: it is a political form which is preferable at this moment to every other, because it has the greatest tendency to reconcile order with liberty.

"Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the country[318] with my disregarded warnings! It only remains for me to sit down on the last fragment of the shipwreck which I have so often foretold. In misfortune I acknowledge every species of power except that of absolving me from my oaths of allegiance. It is also my duty to make my life uniform: after all that I have done, said and written for the Bourbons, I should be the meanest of wretches if I denied them at the moment when, for the third and last time, they are on the road to exile.

"Fear I leave to those generous royalists who have never sacrificed a coin or a place to their loyalty; to those champions of the Altar and the Throne who lately treated me as a renegade, an apostate and a revolutionary. Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master who loaded you with his gifts and whom you have ruined! Instigators of _coups d'État_, preachers of constituent power, where are you? You hide yourselves in the mire from under which you gallantly raised your heads to calumniate the faithful servants of the King; your silence to-day is worthy of your language of yesterday. Let all those doughty knights, whose projected exploits have caused the descendants of Henry IV. to be driven from their throne at the point of the pitchfork, tremble now as they crouch under the three-coloured cockade: it is natural that they should do so. The noble colours which they display will protect their persons, but will not cover their cowardice.

"In thus frankly expressing my sentiments in this tribune, I have no idea that I am performing an act of heroism. Those times are past when opinions were expressed at personal hazard: if such were now the case, I should speak a hundred times louder. The best buckler is a breast that does not fear to show itself uncovered to the enemy. No, gentlemen, we need neither fear a people whose reason is equal to its courage, nor that generous rising generation which I admire, with which I sympathize with all the faculties of my soul, and to which, as to my country, I wish honour, glory and liberty.

"Far from me, above all things, be the thought of sowing seeds of discord in France, and that has been my motive for excluding from my speech every accent of passion. If I could convince myself that a child should be left in the happy ranks of obscurity in order to procure the peace of thirty-three millions of men, I should have regarded every word as criminal which was not consistent with the needs of the time: but I am not so convinced. Had I the disposal of a crown, I would willingly lay it at the feet of M. le Duc d'Orléans. But all that I see vacant is, not a throne, but a tomb at Saint-Denis.

"Whatever destiny may await M. the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, I shall never be his enemy, if he promotes my country's welfare. I only ask to retain my liberty of conscience and the right of going to die where I shall find independence and repose.

"I vote against the declaration."

I was fairly calm when I began my speech, but gradually I was overcome with emotion. When I came to this passage: "Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the country with my disregarded warnings," my voice became troubled, and I was obliged to put my handkerchief to my eyes to keep back tears of love and bitterness. Indignation restored my power of speech in the paragraph that follows:

"Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master who loaded, you with his gifts and whom you have ruined!"

[Sidenote: Its effect on the Peers.]

I turned my glances upon the benches to which I addressed those words. Several peers seemed crushed; they sank down in their arm-chairs till I could no longer see them behind their colleagues seated motionless before them. This speech made some noise: all parties were hurt in it, but all remained silent, because, by the side of great truths, I had placed a great sacrifice. I came down from the tribune; I left the Chamber, went to the cloak-room, took off my peer's coat, my sword, my feathered hat; I unfastened from the last the white cockade and placed it in the little pocket on the left-hand side of the black frock-coat which I put on and buttoned across my heart. My servant carried away the cast-off clothes of the peerage, and I, shaking the dust from my feet, quitted that palace of treachery, which I shall never enter again in my life.

On the 10th and 12th of August, I completed my self-divestment and sent in the different resignations that follow:

"PARIS, 10 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE PRÉSIDENT DE LA CHAMBRE DES PAIRS[319],

"Being unable to take the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe d'Orléans as King of the French, I find myself seized with a legal incapacity which prevents me from attending the sittings of the Hereditary Chamber. One mark of the kindness of King Louis XVIII. and of the royal munificence remains to me: a peer's pension of twelve thousand francs, which was given me to keep up, if not brilliantly, at least independently of immediate needs, the high position to which I was called. It would not be right that I should retain a favour attached to the exercise of functions which I am not able to fulfil. I therefore have the honour to resign into your hands my pension as a peer."

"Paris, 12 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DES FINANCES[320],

"There remains to me, from the kindness of Louis XVII I. and the national munificence, a peer's pension of twelve thousand francs, transformed into an annuity inscribed on the ledger of the public debt and transmissible only to the first direct generation of the annuitant. Not being able to take the oath to Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans as King of the French, it would not be right that I should continue to receive a pension attached to functions which I no longer exercise.

"I therefore write to resign it into your hands: it will have ceased to accrue to me on the day (10 August) when I wrote to M. the President of the Chamber of Peers that it would be impossible for me to take the oath required.

"I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."

"PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.

[Sidenote: I resign pension and place.]

"MONSIEUR LE GRAND RÉFÉRENDAIRE[321],

"I have the honour to send you a copy of the two letters which I have addressed, one to M. the President of the Chamber of Peers, the other to M. the Minister of Finance. You will there see that I renounce my peer's pension and that consequently my attorney will have to receive of this pension only the sum due to the 10th of August, the day on which I declared my refusal to take the oath.

"I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."

"PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE LA JUSTICE[322],

"I have the honour to send you my resignation as Minister of State.

"I am, with high regard,

"Monsieur le ministre de la justice,

"Your most humble and most obedient servant."

I remained as naked as a little St. John; but I had long been accustomed to live on wild honey, and I did not fear that the daughter of Herodias would have a longing for my grey head.

My gold-lace, tassels, bullioned fringe and epaulettes, sold to a Jew and melted down by him, brought me in seven hundred francs, the net produce of all my grandeurs.

And now, what had become of Charles X.? He was travelling towards his exile, accompanied by his Bodyguards, watched over by his three commissaries, passing through France without exciting even the curiosity of the peasants ploughing their furrows beside the high-road. In two or three small towns, hostile movements were made; in some others, townsmen and women showed signs of pity. It must be remembered that Bonaparte roused no more commotion when going from Fontainebleau to Toulon, that France grew no more excited and that the winner of so many battles narrowly escaped death at Orgon. In this tired country, the greatest events are no longer more than dramas played for our diversion: they interest the spectator so long as the curtain is raised and, when it falls, leave but a vain memory. Sometimes Charles X. and his family stopped at wretched carters' rests to take a meal at a corner of a dirty table where wagoners had dined before him. Henry V. and his sister amused themselves in the yard by watching the chickens and pigeons of the inn. I had said it: the Monarchy was going away, and people stood at their windows to see it pass.

Heaven at that moment was pleased to insult both the victorious and the vanquished party. While it was being maintained that "all France" was indignant at the Ordinances, King Philip was in frequent receipt of provincial addresses sent to King Charles to congratulate the latter "on the salutary measures which he had taken and which were saving the monarchy."

The Bey of Titteria, on his side, sent the following act of submission to the dethroned monarch, who was at that time on the road to Cherbourg:

"In the name of God, etc., etc., I recognise as my lord and absolute sovereign great Charles X., the victorious; I will pay him tribute, etc."

It is not easy to imagine a more bitter mockery of both fortunes. Nowadays, revolutions are manufactured by machinery; they are made so fast that a sovereign, while still king on the frontiers of his States, is already no more than an exile in his capital.

This indifference of the country for Charles X. points to something more than lassitude: we are bound to behold in it the progress of democratic ideas and the assimilation of ranks. At an earlier period, the fall of a king of France would have been an enormous event: time has lowered the monarch from the height on which he was placed, has brought him nearer to us, has diminished the space which separated him from the class of the people. If men felt little surprise at meeting the son of St. Louis on the high-road like everybody else, this was due not to a spirit of hatred or system, but quite simply to the sense of social levelling which has penetrated men's minds and which has acted upon the masses without their knowing it.

[Sidenote: Charles X. at Cherbourg.]

A curse, Cherbourg, upon thy ill-omened precincts! It was near Cherbourg that the wind of anger threw Edward III. to ravage our country[323]; it was not far from Cherbourg that the wind of an enemy's victory shattered Tourville's fleet[324]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind of a deceptive prosperity drove Louis XVI. toward his scaffold[325]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind from I know not what shore carried away our last Princes. The coast of Great Britain, on which William the Conqueror[326] landed, witnessed the disembarkation of Charles the Tenth without lance or pennon: he went to Holyrood to find the memories of his youth[327] hung upon the walls of the Stuart palace like old engravings made yellow by time.

I have depicted the Three Days as they unrolled themselves before my eyes: hence a certain contemporary colour, true at the passing moment, false after the moment has passed, is diffused over my picture. There is no revolution so prodigious but, described from minute to minute, will find itself reduced to the slightest proportions. Events issue from the womb of things, even as men from the womb of their mothers, accompanied by the infirmities of nature. Misery and greatness are twin sisters: they are born together; but where the confinement is a vigorous one, misery at a certain period dies, and greatness alone survives. To judge impartially of the truth that is to remain, we must therefore place ourselves at the point of view from which posterity will contemplate the accomplished fact.

Getting away from the meannesses of character and action of which I had been a witness, taking only what will remain of the Days of July, I said with justice in my speech in the Chamber of Peers:

"The people having armed themselves with their courage and their intelligence, it was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe freely amidst the smoke of gunpowder, and that it required rather more than 'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three last suns that have shone over France."

In fact, the people properly so-called were brave and generous on the day of the 28th. The Guards had lost more than 300 men killed and wounded; they did ample justice to the poor classes, who alone fought on that day and among whom were mingled men who were foul-minded, but who were unable to dishonour them. The pupils of the Polytechnic School, who left their school too late on the 28th to take part in the fighting, were placed by the people at their head on the 29th with admirable simplicity and ingenuousness.

Champions who had been absent from the strife sustained by the people came to join their ranks on the 29th, when the greatest danger was past; others, likewise victors, first joined the conquering side on the 30th and 31st.

On the side of the troops, things were very much the same; only the soldiers and officers were engaged: the staff, which had once deserted Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, kept to the heights of Saint-Cloud, watching from which side the wind blew the smoke of the powder. They pressed on each other's heels at Charles X.'s levee; not a soul was present at his couchee.

The moderation of the plebeian classes equalled their courage; order resulted suddenly from confusion. One must have seen the half-naked workmen, posted on sentry at the gate of the public gardens, preventing other ragged workmen from passing, to form an idea of the power of duty which had seized upon the men who remained the masters. They could have paid themselves the price of their blood and allowed themselves to be tempted by their wretchedness. One did not, as on the 10th of August 1792, see the Swiss massacred in their flight. All opinions were respected; never, with a few exceptions, was victory less abused. The victors carried the wounded Guards through the crowd, crying:

"Respect brave men!"

If a soldier came to die, they said:

"Peace to the dead!"

The fifteen years of the Restoration, under a constitutional government, had given rise among us to that spirit of humanity, lawfulness and justice which twenty-five years of the revolutionary and warlike spirit had been unable to produce. The law of force introduced into our manners seemed to have become the common law.

The consequences of the Revolution of July will be memorable. This Revolution has pronounced a decree against all thrones: to-day, kings will be able to reign only by force of arms; a sure means for a moment, but incapable of enduring: the time of successive janissaries is ended.

[Sidenote: Thoughts on the Three Days.]

Neither Tacitus nor Thucydides could give us a good description of the events of the Three Days; it would need Bossuet to explain to us the events in the order of Providence: a genius that saw all, but without overstepping the limits set to its reason and its splendour, like the sun which moves between two dazzling boundaries and which the Orientals call the "Slave of God."

Let us not seek so near at hand the motive powers of a movement placed so far away; the mediocrity of mankind, mad terrors, inexplicable disagreements, hatreds, ambitions, the presumption of some, the prejudice of others, secret conspiracies, buying and selling, well or ill-advised measures, courage or the absence of courage: all these things are the accidents, not the causes, of the event. When people say that they no longer wanted the Bourbons, that these had become hateful because they were supposed to have been forced upon France by the foreigner, this lofty disgust explains nothing satisfactorily.

The movement of July has not to do with politics properly so-called: it has to do with the social revolution which is never idle. By the concatenation of this general revolution, the 28th of July 1830 is only the inevitable sequel of the 21st of January 1793. The work of our first deliberative assemblies had been suspended; it had not been finished. In the course of twenty years, the French had accustomed themselves, like the English under Cromwell, to be governed by other masters than their old sovereigns. The fall of Charles X. is the consequence of the decapitation of Louis XVI., even as the dethronement of James II. is the consequence of the murder of Charles I. The Revolution seemed to die away in the glory of Bonaparte and in the liberties of Louis XVIII., but its germ was not destroyed: lodged at the bottom of our manners, it developed when the faults of the Restoration gave it fresh heat, and soon it burst forth.

The counsels of Providence are revealed in the anti-monarchical changes that are taking place. That superficial minds should see merely a scuffle in the Revolution of the Three Days is quite simple; but reflective men know that an enormous step forward has been taken: the principle of the sovereignty of the people has been substituted for the principle of the royal sovereignty, the hereditary monarchy changed into an elective monarchy. The 21st of January taught that one could dispose of a king's head; the 29th of July has shown that one can dispose of a crown. Now, any truth, good or bad, which manifests itself, remains the acquisition of the crowd. A change ceases to be unheard of, or extraordinary; it no longer presents itself to the mind or the conscience as impious, when it results from an idea that has become popular. The Franks used to exercise the sovereignty collectively; next they delegated it to a few chiefs; then those chiefs confided it to one alone; then this sole chief usurped it for the benefit of his family. Now men are going back from the hereditary royalty to the elective royalty, and from the elective royalty they will glide into the republic. That is the history of society; these are the stages by which the government comes from the people and returns to it.

Let us, then, not believe that the work of July is a superfetation of a day; let us not imagine that Legitimacy is going to come incontinently to re-establish succession by right of primogeniture: let us neither try to persuade ourselves that July will suddenly die a natural death. No doubt, the Orleans Branch will not take root: it is not to produce that result that so much blood, calamity and genius has been expended during the last half-century! But July, if it do not bring about the final destruction of France with the ruin of all her liberties, will bear its natural fruit: that fruit is democracy. The fruit will perhaps be bitter and blood-red; but the Monarchy is an outlandish graft, which will not take on a republican stem.

And so let us not confound the improvised King with the Revolution from which he sprang by chance: the latter, such as we see it, is acting in contradiction with its principles; it seems to have been born without the power to live, because it is punished with a throne: but let it only drag on a few years, this Revolution, and what will have come and gone will change the data that remain to be known. Grown-up men die, or no longer see things as they used to see them; adolescents attain the age of reason; new generations recruit corrupt generations; the linen soaked in the sores of a hospital, when met by a great stream, soils only the water that flows below those corruptions: down stream and up stream, the current keeps or resumes its limpidity.

[Sidenote: The monarchy of July.]

July, free in its origin, produced only a fettered monarchy; but the time will come when, rid of its crown, it will undergo the transformations which are the law of existences; then it will live in an atmosphere befitting its nature.

The errors of the Republican Party, the illusions of the Legitimist Party are both deplorable and go beyond democracy and royalty: the first thinks that violence is the only means of success; the second thinks that the past is the only harbour of safety. Now, there is a moral law which rules society, a general legitimacy which dominates the particular legitimacy. This great law and this great legitimacy are the enjoyment of the natural rights of man, ruled by his duties; for it is the duty that creates the right, and not the right that creates the duty; the passions and the vices relegate us to the class of slaves. The general legitimacy would have had no obstacle to overcome, if it had kept, as belonging to the same principle, the particular legitimacy.

For the rest, one observation will suffice to make us understand the prodigious and majestic might of the family of our old sovereigns; I have already said it and can not repeat it too often: all the royalties will die with the French Royalty.

In fact, the monarchical idea is wanting at the very moment when the monarch is wanting; we find nothing left around us but the democratic idea. My young King will carry away in his arms the monarchy of the world. It is a good ending.

When I was writing all this on what the Revolution of 1830 might be in the future, I had a difficulty in defending myself against an instinct which spoke to me in contradiction to my argument. I took this instinct for the impulse of my dislike of the troubles of 1830; I distrusted myself and, perhaps, in my too loyal impartiality, I exaggerated the future which the Three Days might bring forth. Well, ten years have passed since the fall of Charles X.: has July sat down? We are now at the commencement of December 1840: to what a depth has France sunk! If I could find any pleasure in the humiliation of a government of French origin, I should experience a sort of pride in re-reading, in the _Congrès de Vérone_, my correspondence with Mr. Canning: certainly it differs from that which has just been communicated to the Chamber of Deputies. Whose is the fault? Is it that of the elected Prince? Is it that of the incapacity of his ministers? Is it that of the nation itself, whose character and genius seem to be exhausted? Our ideas are progressive; but do our manners support them? It would not be surprising if a people which has existed fourteen centuries and which has ended that long career with an explosion of miracles should have come to an end. If you read these Memoirs to their conclusion, you will see that, while doing justice to all that has seemed fine to me in the various epochs of our history, I am of opinion that, in the last result, the old society is coming to an end[328].

Here ends my political career. This career ought also to close my Memoirs, since nothing is left for me but to sum up the experiences of my course. Three catastrophes have marked the three preceding parts of my life: I saw Louis XVI. die during my career as a traveller and a soldier; at the end of my political career, Bonaparte disappeared; Charles X., in falling, closed my political career.

I have fixed the period of a revolution in literature, and, in the same way, in politics, I have formulated the principles of representative government: my diplomatic correspondence is worth quite as much, I think, as my literary compositions. It is possible that both are worth nothing at all, but it is certain that they are of equal value.

In France, in the tribune of the House of Peers and in my writings, I exercised so great an influence that I first placed M. de Villèle in office and that, later, he was forced to retire in the face of my opposition, after he had made himself my enemy. All this is proved by what you have read.

The great event of my political career is the Spanish War. It was for me, in this career, what the _Génie du Christianisme_ had been in my literary career. My destiny picked me out to entrust me with the mighty venture which, under the Restoration, might have set in regular order the world's progress towards the future. It took me out of my dreams, and transformed me into a leader of facts. It set me down to play at a table at which were seated, as my adversaries, the two first ministers of the day, Prince Metternich and Mr. Canning: I won the game against both of them. All the serious minds which the Cabinets at that time numbered agreed that they had met a statesman in me[329]. Bonaparte had foreseen it before them, in spite of my books. I am entitled therefore, without boasting, to believe that the politician in me equalled the writer; but I attach no value to political renown: that is why I have allowed myself to speak of it.

[Sidenote: End of my political career.]

If, at the time of the Peninsular Enterprise, I had not been flung aside by deluded men, the course of our destinies would have changed: France would have resumed her frontiers, the equilibrium of Europe would have been re-established; the Restoration, becoming glorious, might have lived a long time yet, and my diplomatic work would also have marked a stage in our history. Between my two lives, there is only a difference of result. My literary career, completely accomplished, has produced all that it had to produce, because it depended on myself alone. My political career was suddenly stopped in the midst of its successes, because it depended on others.

Nevertheless, I admit that my politics were applicable only to the Restoration. When a transformation takes place in principles, societies and men, what was good yesterday becomes antiquated and lapsed to-day. With regard to Spain, the relations between the Royal Families having ceased, owing to the abolition of the Salic Law, there is no longer a question of creating impenetrable frontiers beyond the Pyrenees; we must accept the field of battle which Austria and England may one day open up to us there; we must take things at the point to which they have come and abandon, not without regret, a firm but reasonable line of conduct, the certain benefits of which were, it is true, long-dated. I feel conscious of having served the Legitimacy as it should be served. I saw the future as clearly as I see it now; only I wished to reach it by a less dangerous road, so that the Legitimacy, which was essential to our constitutional instruction, might not stumble in a precipitous course. To-day, my plans are no longer realizable: Russia is going to turn elsewhere. If, as things now are, I were to enter the Peninsula, whose spirit has had time to change, it would be with other thoughts: I should occupy myself only with the alliance of the nations, suspicious, jealous, passionate, uncertain and variable though it be, and should not dream of relations between the kings. I should say to France:

"You have left the beaten track for the path of precipices: very well, explore its wonders and its perils. Come to us, innovations, enterprises, discoveries! Come, and let arms, if necessary, favour you! Where is there anything new? In the East? Let us march there! Where can we direct our courage and our intelligence? Let us hasten thither! Let us place ourselves at the head of the great rising of the human race; let us not allow ourselves to be outstripped; let the French name go before the others on this crusade, as of old it did to the Tomb of Christ!"

Yes, if I were admitted to my country's councils, I would try to be of use to it in the dangerous principles which it has adopted: to restrain it at present, would mean to condemn it to a base death. I should not be satisfied with speeches: adding works to faith, I should prepare soldiers and millions, I should build ships, like Noe, to make prevision for the deluge, and, if I were asked why, I should answer:

"Because such is France's good pleasure."

My dispatches would warn the Cabinets of Europe that nothing shall stir on the globe without our intervention; that, if the world's shreds are to be distributed, the lion's share shall fall to us. We should cease humbly to ask our neighbours for leave to exist; the heart of France would beat freely, no hand would dare to lay itself upon that heart to count its throbbings; and, since we are seeking new suns, I should dart towards their splendour and no longer await the natural rise of dawn.

God grant that these industrial interests, in which we are to find a prosperity of a new kind, may deceive nobody, that they may prove as fruitful, as civilizing as the moral interests whence the old society issued! Time will teach us whether they be not the barren dreams of those sterile intellects which lack the faculty of rising above the material world.

[Sidenote: With the Legitimacy.]

Although my part finishes with the Legitimacy, all my wishes are for France, whatever be the powers which her improvident whim may lead her to obey. As for myself, I ask for nothing more; I would wish only not too long to outlive the ruins which lie crumbling at my feet. But one's years are like the Alps: scarce has one surmounted the first, before others rise before one. Alas, those last and higher mountains are uninhabited, arid and topped with snow!

[Footnote 263: This book was written in Paris, in August and September 1830, and revised in December 1840.--T.]

[Footnote 264: Michel Chevalier (1806-1879), who later achieved distinction as the promoter of the Treaty of Commerce between France and England.--T.]

[Footnote 265: Ulysse Trélat (_b._ 1795), a well-known mad-doctor and politician. He was Minister of Public Works for six weeks in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 266: Jean Baptiste Teste (1780-1852), a famous lawyer, went to Belgium after the Second Restoration and became attorney-general to King William I. of the Netherlands. He returned to France at the outbreak of the Revolution and filled several ministerial offices during the reign of Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 267: Augustin Guinard has already been mentioned as being among the first to enter the Tuileries on the 29th of July (_supra_, p. 109).--T.]

[Footnote 268: Charles Hingray (1797-1870), a bookseller and politician, and a consistent Radical.--T.]

[Footnote 269: Louis François Auguste Cauchois-Lemaire (1789-1861), a French publicist, founder of the _Nain jaune_ (1814) and author of an _Histoire de la révolution de Juillet_ (1841). He continued his opposition to the Monarchy after the Revolution of July.--T.]

[Footnote 270: The Battle of Jemmapes (6 November 1792), in which Dumouriez defeated the Austrians under the Duke of Saxe-Teschen. Louis-Philippe, then Duc de Chartres, was present at the battle as a lieutenant-general, and is said to have decided the victory, which led to the occupation of Belgium.--T.]

[Footnote 271: The Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), in which the French under Kellermann, acting under the orders of Dumouriez, repulsed the Prussians, led by the Duke of Brunswick. In this battle, which produced an immense moral effect, the Duc de Chartres also distinguished himself.--T.]

[Footnote 272: Here the _Souvenirs_ of the Duc de Broglie agree with the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe._ M. de Broglie says:

"Posted up on M. Laffitte's own door, on the Bourse, and in all the public places, one read a placard worded as follows:

"'Charles X. cannot return to Paris: he has shed the blood of the people.

"'The Republic would expose us to horrible divisions; it would embroil us with Europe.

"'The Duc d'Orléans is a Prince devoted to the cause of the Revolution.

"'The Duc d'Orléans has never fought against us.

"'The Duc d'Orléans was at Jemmapes.

"'The Duc d'Orléans has worn the national colours, the Duc d'Orléans alone can wear them still.

"'The Duc d'Orléans has declared himself: he accepts the Charter as we have always desired and understood it.

"'He will hold his crown at the hands of the French People.'

"This last phrase was immediately modified as follows on a second placard:

"'The Duc d'Orléans makes no declaration: he awaits our will; let us proclaim that will: he will accept the Charter as we have always desired and understood it.'"

The Duc de Broglie adds:

"Whence did these placards proceed? We know to-day that they were the work of Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, and that Paulin the bookseller, strong in the support of his friends, gave attention to the printing and the posting. Was M. Laffitte in the secret? There is reason to presume so."(_Souvenirs du feu Duc de Broglie_, vol. III.)--B.]

[Footnote 273: Ary Scheffer (1785-1858), the Dutch painter. He was appointed painting-master to the Orleans children, in 1821, and remained on a very intimate footing with the Orleans Family throughout.--T.]

[Footnote 274: Madame Adélaïde (1777-1847), younger sister of Louis-Philippe. She exercised a great ascendant over that Monarch's mind, was his adviser during the whole of his reign, and her death plunged him into a state of dejection which facilitated the Revolution of 1848. She accumulated a large fortune, which she bequeathed to her nephews.--T.]

[Footnote 275: The Duc d'Orléans occupied a royal residence at Neuilly which was demolished in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 276: The Marquis de Sémonville, as Grand Referendary, had a set of official apartments at the Luxembourg.--T.]

[Footnote 277: Epicurus (342 B.C.--270 B.C.), the Greek philosopher.--T.]

[Footnote 278: Captain Le Motha is the original of the officer immortalized by Alfred de Vigny in the last and admirable episode of his _Servitude et grandeur militaires_, entitled, _La Vie et la mort du capitaine Renaud._--B.]

[Footnote 279: Antoine Louis Marie de Gramont, Duc de Guiche (1755-1836), emigrated to England during the Revolution and, as "Captain Gramont," served in the 10th Hussars. He returned to France with the Duc d'Angoulême as first aide-de-camp, and was created a peer of France in June 1814. He took the oath of allegiance to the new Government after the Revolution of July, and remained a peer till his death.--B.]

[Footnote 280: M. de Guernon-Rainville, who was at Saint-Cloud at that time, thus describes this deplorable scene in his Journal:

"The Prince and the marshal were alone in the green drawing-room at Saint-Cloud; the explanations of the Duc de Raguse did not satisfy the Dauphin, who exclaimed:

"'Do you mean to betray us too?'

"At these words, the marshal laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. The Prince saw the movement, rushed forwards and, trying to snatch the sword from its scabbard, wounded his hand slightly; then, flinging the sword on the floor, he seized the marshal by the collar, threw him on a sofa, and called to the guards who were in the next room. At that moment, the officer on duty, hearing the noise, opened the door of the drawing-room; the Prince ordered him to place the marshal under arrest in his room.

"The King, hearing of this strange scene, reproached the Dauphin for it, and asked him to become reconciled with the marshal, who was at once sent for. He made some excuse to the Prince, who answered:

"'I myself have been in the wrong; but your sword has drawn my blood, so we are quits....'

"And he offered him his hand."--B.]

[Footnote 281: Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (1571-1640), son of Henri I. Duc de Guise, the second duke who bore the surname of the Balafré.--T.]

[Footnote 282: Antoine Montbreton, Maréchal de Saint-Pol (_circa_ 1550-1593), one of the heads of the League, was assassinated by the Duc de Guise at Rheims, where he had gone to maintain order among the Spanish garrison.--T.]

[Footnote 283: Marcus Junius Brutus (85 B.C.--42 B.C.), one of Cæsar's assassins.--T.]

[Footnote 284: Lucius Junius Brutus, Roman Consul in 509 B.C., after bringing about the expulsion of the Tarquins.--T.]

[Footnote 285: Marie-Amélie Duchesse d'Orléans, later Queen of the French (1782-1866), daughter of Ferdinand I. King of the Two Sicilies, and married to the Duc d'Orléans in 1809.--T.]

[Footnote 286: Ambroise Anatole Augustin Comte, later Marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1788-1878), entered the service as a private in 1806, became a colonel and aide-de-camp to the Emperor in 1814 and, in 1816, aide-de-camp to the Duc d'Orléans. In 1823, he was appointed a lord-in-waiting to the Duchess. He was promoted to brigadier-general in 1831, was a deputy from 1834 to 1841 and, in 1841, was created a peer of France, and a grandee of Spain and a marquis in 1847.--B.]

[Footnote 287: Auguste Marie Baron de Berthois (1787-1870) had served in all the campaigns from 1809 to 1814. He became aide-de-camp to the Duc d'Orléans under the Restoration, and was with him throughout the Days of July. He was promoted to colonel, in 1831, and, later, to brigadier-general. Berthois sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1832 to 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 288: I give below the text of the two proclamations issued by the Duc d'Orléans and the Chamber of Deputies respectively:

"Inhabitants of Paris!

"The Deputies of France at this moment assembled in Paris have expressed to me the desire that I should repair to this capital to exercise the functions of Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom.

"I have not hesitated to come and share your dangers, to place myself in the midst of your heroic population, and to exert all my efforts to preserve you from the calamities of civil war and anarchy.

"On returning to the City of Paris, I wear with pride those glorious colours which you have resumed and which I myself long wore.

"The Chambers are going to assemble; they will consider of the means of securing the reign of the laws and the maintenance of the rights of the nation.

"The Charter will henceforward be a reality.

"LOUIS-PHILIPPE D'ORLÉANS."

"Frenchmen!

"France is free. Absolute power raised its standard: the heroic population of Paris has overthrown it. Paris, attacked, has made the sacred cause triumph, by means which had triumphed in vain in the elections. A power which usurped our rights and disturbed our repose threatened at once both liberty and order. We return to the possession of order and liberty. There is no more fear for acquired rights, no further barrier between us and the rights which we still require. A government which may, without delay, secure to us these advantages is now the first want of our country. Frenchmen, those of your Deputies who are already in Paris have assembled and, till the Chambers can regularly intervene, they have invited a Frenchman who has never fought but for France--the Duc d'Orléans--to exercise the functions of Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom. This is, in their opinion, the surest means promptly to accomplish, by peace, the success of the most legitimate defense.

"The Duc d'Orléans is devoted to the national and constitutional cause. He has always defended its interests and professed its principles. He will respect our rights, for he will derive his own from us. We shall secure to ourselves, by laws, all the guarantees necessary to strong and durable liberty:

"The re-establishment of the National Guard, with the intervention of the National Guards in the choice of their officers;

"The intervention of the citizens in the formation of the departmental and municipal administrations;

"The jury for the transgressions of the press; the legally organized responsibility of the ministers and of the secondary agents of the administration;

"The situation and rank of the military legally secured; and

"The re-election of deputies in the place of those appointed to public offices. Such guarantees will, at length, give to our institutions, in concert with the head of the state, the developments of which they have need.

"Frenchmen, the Duc d'Orléans himself has already spoken, and his language is that which is suitable to a free country:

"'The Chambers,' he says, 'are going to assemble; they will consider of means to insure the reign of the laws, and the maintenance of the rights of the nation.

"'The Charter will henceforward be a reality.'"--T.]

[Footnote 289: Louis Philippe, fourth Duc d'Orléans (1725-1785), married, in 1743, to the Princesse Louise de Conti, who died in 1759. In 1773, he married Madame de Montesson, secretly, as his second wife, and passed the last years of his life at Bagnolet in protecting men of letters and artists.--T.]

[Footnote 290: Louis, third Duc d'Orléans (1703-1752), the only quite respectable head of the House of Orléans. He led a life distinguished for its erudition and piety: so much so that he was at one time, although on insufficient grounds, suspected of Jansenism. Louis was married, in 1724, to the Princess Augusta of Baden, who died two years later.--T.]

[Footnote 291: Philip II., second Duc d'Orléans (1674-1723), nephew to Louis XIV. and married in 1692, to his legitimatized daughter, Mademoiselle de Blois, was Regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. ( 1715-1723). The Regent was one of the greatest statesmen that France has seen: his private life was scandalous.--T.]

[Footnote 292: Philip I., first Duc d'Orléans of the second creation (1640-1701), married first, in 1661, to his cousin, the Princess Henrietta of England, who died in 1670, daughter of King Charles I.; secondly, in 1671, to the Princess Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, who died in 1722. It will be seen that, as the descendants of Henry IV., who was the grandfather of Philip I. of Orleans, the Orleans Princes were a younger branch of the House of Bourbon, and that the "Valois" pretensions were utter nonsense. The exact relationship of Louis-Philippe to Charles X. was that of a sixth cousin. The Orleans Princes were Princes of the Blood, but not of France, and were Serene Highnesses down to Louis-Philippe, who was created a Royal Highness by Charles X.--T.]

[Footnote 293: Consisting of a certain number of Republicans who met, musket in hand at a restaurant kept by one Lointier. The principal members of this gathering, including Trélat, Guinard, Charles Teste, Bastide, Poubelle, Charles Hingray, Chevalier and Hubert formed the first rank of the enemies of the Monarchy of July.--B.]

[Footnote 294: Alexandre Edme Baron Méchin (1772-1849), one of the bitterest speakers in the Liberal Opposition during the Restoration. The Government of July made him Prefect of the Nord and a councillor of State.--B.]

[Footnote 295: Jean Pons Guillaume Viennet (1777-1868), a deputy from 1820 to 1837, a peer of France from 1839 to 1848, and a member of the French Academy (1830). He was an indefatigable rhymester; he became the butt of the press, thanks to his ultra-classical and (after 1830) ultra-conservative ideas, and retorted with infinite wit, giving the papers a Roland for their Oliver throughout the duration of the Monarchy of July, from 1830 to 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 296: BLANC: _Histoire de dix ans_, Vol. I.--B.]

[Footnote 297: Pierre Victoire Palma-Cayet (1525-1610), author of the _Chronologie novennaire_, the _Chronologie septennaire_, etc.--T.]

[Footnote 298: This Joubert was the man who, with his friend Dugied, introduced the _Carbonari_ into France. They were both implicated in the so-called Military Conspiracy of the Bazaar, in 1820, and took refuge in Naples. In 1822, Joubert was one of the principal agents of the Belfort Plot. He succeeded in escaping for the second time, to Spain, where he fought against the French and was taken prisoner at the battle of Llers. As he had been twice wounded, he was taken to the Perpignan Hospital, whence Dugied, by means of bribery, procured his escape. He reached Belgium, where he remained till 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 299: Eléonore Louis Godefroy Cavaignac (1801-1845), son of the Conventional, Jean Baptiste Cavaignac, and elder brother to General Eugène Cavaignac. For fifteen years he remained a formidable adversary of the Monarchy of July, fighting it with every weapon and on every ground, in the streets, in the press, in the law-courts, in prison and in exile. He died in harness on the 5th of May 1845.--B.]

[Footnote 300: Marie Anne Joseph Degousée (1795-1862) conspired under the Restoration and under Louis-Philippe, and fought at the barricades in February 1848. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly and supported General Cavaignac's candidature for the Presidency. He failed to secure re-election to the Legislative Assembly and withdrew into private life, resuming his work as a civil engineer.--B.]

[Footnote 301: Gustav Karl Frederik Count Lœwenhielm (1771-1856), the Swedish Minister Plenipotentiary, had been in Paris since 1818.--B.]

[Footnote 302: Sir Charles Stuart, the British Ambassador, had been raised to the peerage as Lord Stuart de Rothesay in 1828. He was Ambassador to the Court of France from 1815 to 1824 and from 1828 to 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 303: This is very nearly what I wrote to Mr. Canning in 1823 (_Cf._ the _Congrès de Vérone_).--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 304: Russian Ambassador from 1814 to 1835. Pozzo was devoted to Paris, and returned there after his retirement from the London Embassy and diplomatic life in 1839.--T.]

[Footnote 305: Wilhelm Baron von Werther (_d._ 1859), Prussian Minister to Paris from 1824 to 1837 and Prussian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1837 to 1841. He was the father of Karl Anton Philipp Baron von Werther, who was Ambassador of Prussia and the North German Confederation to Paris from October 1869 until the rupture of diplomatic relations in July 1870.--B.]

[Footnote 306: Henry V. King of France and Navarre (1820-1883), son of the Duc de Berry, was, to the time of his _de jure_ accession, in August 1830, known as Henri Charles Ferdinand Marie Dieudonné d'Artois, Duc de Bordeaux. Later, he assumed the title of Comte de Chambord, by which he was known till his death. He married, in 1846, Maria Teresa Gaetana, daughter of Francis IV. Duke of Modena. Queen Marie-Thérèse died in 1886.--T.]

[Footnote 307: The context would lead the reader to think that Prince Esterhazy was Ambassador to Paris at the time of the Revolution of July. This is not so. The Austrian Ambassador to Paris in 1830 was Count Apponyi.--B.]

[Footnote 308: Pozzo di Borgo was a native of Ajaccio in Corsica. The Blue Ribbon mentioned above was the ribbon of the Order of the Holy Ghost.--T.]

[Footnote 309: Étienne Tardif de Pommeroux, Comte de Bordesoulle (1771-1837), took part in all the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, and rallied to the Bourbons in 1814, accompanying Louis XVIII. to Ghent. He distinguished himself greatly in the Spanish War of 1823 and, on his return, was raised to the peerage. He took the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe's Government, and remained a member of the House of Peers till his death.--B.]

[Footnote 310: The sentences here omitted by Chateaubriand ran as follows:

"I charge Lieutenant-general the Vicomte de Foissac-Latour with this letter to you. He has orders to consult with you as to the arrangements to be made in favour of those persons who have accompanied me, as well as those which may be suitable for myself and the rest of my family.

"We shall afterwards regulate the other measures which may become necessary in consequence of the change of reign."--T.]

[Footnote 311: Jean François Jacqueminot, later Vicomte de Ham (1787-1865), a colonel of the Empire, and a deputy at the time of the Revolution of July. Louis-Philippe appointed him to various high commands in the National Guard and created him a viscount.--B.]

[Footnote 312: "General Pajol told me, shortly before his death, that, in the course of his long military career, he had never thought himself so near defeat." (MARCELLUS: _Chateaubriand et son temps_, p. 302).--B.]

[Footnote 313: The Duchesse d'Orléans, later Queen of the French, was the sister, the Duchesse de Berry the daughter of Francis I. King of the Two Sicilies.--T.]

[Footnote 314: Saint Hilary Bishop of Poitiers (_d._ 368), honoured on the 14th of January. His chief works are _De Trinitate, De Synodis_ and commentaries.--T.]

[Footnote 315: Louis Clair Comte de Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire (1778-1854), brother-in-law to M. Decazes. He sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1815 to 1829, when, on the death of his father, he entered the Chamber of Peers. He was away from Paris at the time of the Revolution of July, hurried back to Paris, and, after some hesitation, adhered to the new Government and received the Roman Embassy, followed, in 1833, by the Embassy in Vienna and, lastly, by that in London, which he occupied from 1841 to 1847. He was the author of a remarkable Histoire de la Fronde (1827) and, in 1841, was elected a member of the French Academy.--B.]

[Footnote 316: Auxonne Marie Théodose Comte de Thiard de Bissy (1772-1852) was the son of Claude VIII. de Thiard, Comte de Bissy, Lieutenant-general of the King's Armies, Governor of the Town and Castle of Auxonne, Governor of the Palais-Royal and the Tuileries, in Paris, and one of the forty of the French Academy; and nephew of the Comte de Thiard, the King's Commandant in Brittany in 1789, guillotined in 1794, who has been more than once mentioned in Vol. I. of the Memoirs. Auxonne Marie Théodose emigrated in 1791 and served in Condé's Army until 1799. Under the Empire, after being employed by Napoleon in his armies and in diplomacy, he was disgraced, in 1807, and lived in retirement until 1814. He was a representative during the Hundred Days and a deputy from 1820 to 1834 and from 1837 to 1848. Ex-Emigrant and born at the Tuileries though he were, he always sat with the Extreme Left, both under the Restoration and the Government of July.--B.]

[Footnote 317: François Duris-Dufresne (1769-1837) was also an ex-officer. After forming part of the Legislative Body from the Year XII. to 1809, he entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1827 and voted with the Left. He adhered to the Revolution of July and the usurpation of Louis-Philippe; but events soon drove him into the Dynastic Opposition. From 1831 to 1834, he sat with the Extreme Left.--B.]

[Footnote 318: Some editions have "peerage" instead of "country."--T.]

[Footnote 319: The Baron Pasquier had been President of the House of Peers since the 4th of August.--B.]

[Footnote 320: The Baron Louis was Minister of Finance.--B.]

[Footnote 321: The Marquis de Sémonville continued Grand Refendary.--B.]

[Footnote 322: Dupont de l'Eure (1767-1855) had been President of the Imperial Court at Rouen. He became Minister of Justice after the Revolution of 1830, but soon went over to the Opposition, where he won an enormous popularity. In 1848, he was elected, by acclamation, President of the Provisional Government, a position which, owing to his great age, he held only nominally.--T.]

[Footnote 323: Edward III. landed near Cherbourg in 1346, besieged the city and laid waste the surrounding country.--T.]

[Footnote 324: Anne Hilarion de Contentin, Comte de Tourville (1642-1701), was defeated off the Hogue in 1692 by the combined Dutch and English fleets; his own fleet was destroyed.--T.]

[Footnote 325: The famous dyke of Cherbourg, which turned that harbour into a first-class port, was built under Louis XVI.--T.]

[Footnote 326: William I. King of England (1027-1087), surnamed the Conqueror, landed at Pevensey on the 28th of September 1066; Charles X. landed, on the 17th of August 1830, at Spithead.--T.]

[Footnote 327: Holyrood Palace had been the residence of Charles X. during the First Emigration.--T.]

[Footnote 328: Paris, 3 December 1840.--_Author's Note._]

[Footnote 329: _Cf._ the letters and dispatches of the different Courts, quoted in the _Congrès de Vérone_; consult also the _Ambassade de Rome.--Author's Note._]

PART THE FOURTH

1830-1841