BOOK XIV[162

Sycophancy of the newspapers--M. de Polignac's first colleagues--The Algerian Expedition--Opening of the Session of 1830--The Address--The Chamber is dissolved--New Chamber--I leave for Dieppe--The Ordinances of the 25th of July--I return to Paris--Reflexions on the journey--Letter to Madame Récamier--The Revolution of July--M. Baude, M. de Choiseul, M. de Sémonville, M. de Vitrolles, M. Laffitte, and M. Thiers--I write to the King at Saint-Cloud--His verbal answer--Aristocratic corps--Pillage of the house of the missionaries in the Rue d'Enfer--The Chamber of Deputies--M. de Mortemart--A walk through Paris--General Dubourg--Funeral ceremony--Under the colonnade of the Louvre--The young men carry me back to the House of Peers--Meeting of the Peers.

When the swallows near the moment of their departure, there is one that flies away first to announce the approaching passage of the rest: mine were the first wings that preceded the last flight of Legitimacy. Did the praises with which the newspapers loaded me charm me? Not in the least. Some of my friends tried to console me by assuring me that I was on the point of becoming Prime Minister; that this party stroke so frankly played decided my future: they thought they saw in me an ambition of which I did not possess the very germ. I do not understand how any man who has lived but eight days with me can fail to have perceived my total lack of that passion--a very lawful one, for that matter--which enables one to push through a political career. I was ever on the watch for the occasion to retire: if I was so devoted to the Roman Embassy, that was just because it led to nothing and because it was a retreat in a blind alley.

Lastly, at the bottom of my conscience I had a certain fear of having already driven opposition too far; I was forcibly about to become its bond, its centre and its object: I was frightened of it, and this fear increased my regrets for the tranquil shelter I had lost.

Be this as it may, much incense was burnt before the wooden idol that had climbed down from its altar. M. de Lamartine, a new and brilliant light of France, wrote to me on the subject of his candidature for the Academy[163], and ended his letter thus:

"M. de La Noue, who has just been spending a few minutes with me, told me that he had left you occupying your noble leisure in raising a monument to France. Each of your voluntary and courageous disgraces will thus bring its tribute of esteem to your name and of glory to your country."

This noble letter from the author of the _Méditations poétiques_ was followed by one from M. de Lacretelle[164]. He in his turn wrote:

"What a moment they choose to outrage you, you the man of sacrifices, you the man to whom fine actions come as easily as fine works! Your resignation and the formation of the new Ministry had appeared to me, in advance, in the light of two connected events. You have accustomed us to acts of devotion, as Bonaparte accustomed us to victory; but he had many companions, whereas you have not many imitators."

Two very literary men, both writers of great merit, M. Abel Rémusat[165] and M. Saint-Martin[166], alone at that time had the weakness to rise up against me: they were attached to M. le Baron de Damas. I can imagine that people are a little irritated by men who despise places: that is one of those pieces of insolence that cannot be endured.

M. Guizot himself deigned to visit me in my abode; he thought he might overcome the immense distance which Nature had set between us; on accosting me, he said these words full of all that he owed to himself:

"Monsieur, things are very different to-day!"

In the year 1829, M. Guizot had need of me for his election; I wrote to the electors of Lisieux, and they carried him[167]; M. de Broglie[168] thanked me in the note that follows:

"Permit me to thank you, monsieur, for the letter which you have been good enough to address to me. I have made the right use of it, and I am convinced that, in common with all that comes from you, it will bear fruit and salutary fruit. For my part, I am as grateful to you as though I myself were concerned, for there is no event with which I have more closely identified myself nor which arouses in me a keener interest."

The July days found M. Guizot a deputy, and the result was that I am partly the cause of his political rise: sometimes Heaven hearkens to the prayer of the humble.

[Sidenote: M de Polignac's colleagues.]

M. de Polignac's first colleagues were Messieurs de Bourmont[169], de La Bourdonnaye, de Chabrol, de Courvoisier[170] and de Montbel[171]. On the 17th of June 1815, at Ghent, I had been waiting on the King, when I met at the foot of the stairs a man in a frock-coat and muddy boots who was going up to His Majesty. By his lively expression, his finely-shaped nose, his beautiful, soft, adder-like eyes, I recognised General Bourmont: he had deserted Bonaparte's army. The Comte de Bourmont is a meritorious officer, skilful at extricating himself from difficult situations, but one of those men who, when placed in the front rank, see obstacles without being able to conquer them. They are made to be led, not to lead. He is fortunate in his sons, and Algiers will leave him a name.

The Comte de La Bourdonnaye, formerly my friend, is certainly the most disagreeable personage that ever lived: he lets fly at you the instant you approach him; he attacks the speakers in the Chamber, as he does his neighbours in the country; he cavils over a word, just as he goes to law about a ditch or a drain. On the very morning of the day on which I was appointed Foreign Minister, he came to tell me that he was breaking with me: I was a minister. I laughed and let my male termagant go about his business: laughing himself, he looked like a thwarted bat[172].

M. de Montbel, at first Minister of Public Instruction, replaced M. de La Bourdonnaye at the Interior when the latter resigned, and M. de Guernon-Ranville[173] followed M. de Montbel at the Ministry of Public Instruction.

Men were preparing for war on both sides: the Ministerial Party launched ironical pamphlets against the _Représentatif_; the Opposition organized itself and spoke of refusing to pay taxes in the event of a violation of the Charter. A public association, called the Breton Association, was formed to resist the Administration: my fellow-countrymen have often taken the lead in our later revolutions; every Breton head has something in common with the winds that vex the shores of our peninsula.

A newspaper[174] set up with the avowed object of overthrowing the Old Dynasty came to excite men's minds. The handsome young bookseller, Sautelet[175], pursued with suicidal mania, had several times felt the longing to make his death useful to his party by some bold stroke; he was charged with the business part of the republican sheet: Messieurs Thiers[176], Mignet[177] and Carrel[178] were its editors. The patron of the National, M. le Prince de Talleyrand, did not put a sou into the cash-box; he was content to defile the paper's spirit by adding to the common fund his quotum of treason and rottenness. On this occasion I received the following note from M. Thiers:

[Sidenote: A note from M. Theirs.]

"MONSIEUR,

"Not knowing whether the service of a new paper will be performed with exactness, I send you the first number of the _National._ All my collaborators unite with me in begging you to consent to regard yourself, not as a subscriber, but as a gentle reader. If, in this first article, the object of great anxiety to me, I have succeeded in expressing opinions that meet with your approval, I shall feel reassured and certain of being in the right road.

"Receive, monsieur, my homage.

"A. THIERS."

I shall return to the editors of the _National_; I shall tell how I have known them; but I must at once place M. Carrel on one side: superior to both Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, he had the simplicity to look upon himself, at the time when I became connected with him, as coming after writers whom he excelled; he upheld with his sword the opinions which those penmen laid bare.

While these men were making ready for the contest, the preparations for the Algerian Expedition were being completed. General Bourmont, the Minister for War, had had himself appointed to the command of that expedition: was it his intention to escape responsibility for the _coup d'État_ which he felt coming? That was likely enough, to judge from his antecedents and his craftiness; but it was a misfortune for Charles X. Had the general been in Paris at the time of the catastrophe, the vacant portfolio of the War Office would not have fallen into the hands of M. de Polignac. Before striking the blow, presuming that he would have agreed to it, M. de Bourmont would doubtless have assembled the whole of the Royal Guard in Paris; he would have got ready money and the necessary provisions, so that the soldier should have wanted for nothing.

Our navy, brought to life again at the Battle of Navarino, sailed from the French ports lately so abandoned. The roads were covered with ships which saluted the land as they moved away. Steamboats, a new discovery of man's genius, came and went, carrying orders from one division to the other, like sirens or the aides-de-camp of the admiral. The Dauphin stood on shore, where all the population of the town and mountains had gathered. After snatching his kinsman, the King of Spain, from the hands of the revolution, he beheld the dawn of the day on which Christianity was to be delivered: could he have believed night to be so near at hand[179]?

[Sidenote: The Algerian expedition.]

The times were past in which Catherine de Medici begged from the Turk the investiture of the Principality of Algiers for Henry III., not yet King of Poland! Algiers was about to become our daughter and our conquest, without anybody's permission, without England's daring to prevent us from taking that "Emperor's Fort" which recalled Charles V. and the change in his fortunes[180].

It was a great joy and a great happiness to the assembled French spectators to greet, with Bossuet's greeting, the generous vessels, ready to break the slave's chain with their prows; a victory increased by the cry uttered by the Eagle of Meaux when he announced the future success to the Great King, as though to console him one day in his tomb for the dispersal of his dynasty:

"Thou shalt yield, or fall under that victor, Algiers, rich in the spoils of Christianity. Thou saidst in thy heart of greed:

"I hold the sea under my laws and the nations are my prey!'

"The swiftness of thy ships gave thee confidence, but thou shalt see thyself attacked in thy walls like a ravenous bird which one hunts amid its rocks and in its nest, where it shares its booty among its young. Already thou art releasing thy slaves. Louis has shattered the irons under which thou wert loading his subjects, who are born to be free under his glorious empire. The astonished pilots cry beforehand:

"'Who is like unto Tyre? And yet she kept silence in the midst of the sea[181].'"

O splendid words, could you not retard the crumbling of the Throne? Nations proceed towards their destinies; like certain of Dante's shades, they cannot possibly be arrested, even in good fortune.

Those vessels, which carried liberty to the seas of Numidia, were carrying away the Legitimacy; that fleet under the White Flag was the Monarchy getting under way, sailing from the ports where St. Louis embarked when Death called him to Carthage. O slaves delivered from imprisonment, they who have restored you to your native land have lost their country; they who have saved you from eternal banishment are banished. The master of that huge fleet has crossed the sea on a bark as a fugitive, and France can say to him what Cornelia said to Pompey:

"It is indeed the work of my fortune, not of thine, that I see thee now reduced to one small ship where thou hadst wished to go before the breeze with five hundred sail."

Had I not friends among that crowd which, on the beach of Toulon, followed with its eyes the fleet setting sail for Africa? Did not M. du Plessix, my brother-in-law's brother, receive on board his ship a charming woman, Madame Lenormant, who was awaiting the return of the friend[182] of Champollion[183]? What came of that flight executed in Africa, executed at a single swoop? Let us listen to M. de Penhoen[184], my fellow-Breton:

"Not two months had elapsed since we saw that same banner wave in front of those same shores over five hundred ships. Then, sixty thousand men were impatient to go to unfurl it on the battle-field in Africa. To-day, a few sick, a few wounded, painfully dragging themselves along the deck of our frigate, formed its only retinue.... At the moment when the guard took up arms, according to custom, to salute the flag as it was hoisted or lowered, all conversation ceased on deck. I uncovered with the same respect that I should have shown to the old King himself. I knelt within my heart before the majesty of great misfortunes, of which I was sadly contemplating the symbol[185]."

The session of 1830 opened on the 2nd of March. In the Speech from the Throne, the King was made to say:

"If culpable manœuvres should raise in the way of my Government obstacles which I cannot, or, rather, which I will not anticipate, I shall find the means of overcoming them[186]."

Charles X. uttered these words in the tone of a man who, habitually timid and gentle, happens to find himself in a passion and excites himself with the sound of his own voice: the more forcible the words were, the feebler appeared the resolutions behind it.

[Sidenote: The address of the Chamber.]

The Address in reply was drawn up by Messieurs Étienne[187] and Guizot. It said:

"Sire, the Charter consecrates, as a right, the intervention of the country in the discussion of its public interests. This intervention renders the permanent accord between the political views of the Government and the wishes of your people the indispensable condition of the regular march of public affairs. Sire, our loyalty, our devotion condemn us to tell you that this accord does not exist."

The Address was voted by a majority of 221 against 181. An amendment was moved by M. de Lorgeril[188] to do away with the phrase relating to the refusal of concurrence. This amendment obtained only 28 votes. If the 221 had been able to foresee the result of their vote, the Address would have been rejected by a huge majority. Why does Providence not sometimes raise a corner of the veil that covers the future? It gives, it is true, a presentiment to certain men; but they do not see clear enough to make sure of their way, they fear to make a mistake, or, if they venture upon predictions which are accomplished, no one believes them. God does not push aside the cloud from the background in which He acts; when He permits great evils to take place, it is because He has great plans, plans extending over a general plane, unrolled in a deep horizon beyond our view and beyond the reach of our short-lived generations.

The King, in his Reply to the Address, declared that his resolution was unchangeable, in other words, that he would not dismiss M. de Polignac. The dissolution of the Chamber was resolved upon: Messieurs de Peyronnet and de Chantelauze replaced Messieurs de Chabrol and Courvoisier, who resigned; M. Capelle was appointed Minister of Commerce. They had a score of men around them capable of being ministers; they might have sent for M. de Villèle again; they might have taken M. Casimir Périer and General Sébastiani. I had already proposed the two latter to the King when, after the fall of M. de Villèle, the Abbé Frayssinous was told to offer me the Ministry of Public Instruction. But no; they held capable men in abhorrence. In their fervour for nullity, they sought, as though to humiliate France, for the smallest thing she had to put at her head. They had dug up M. Guernon de Ranville, who, however, was the bravest of the unknown band, and the Dauphin had besought M. de Chantelauze to save the Monarchy.

The decrees dissolving the Chamber summoned the district electoral colleges for the 23rd of June 1830 and the departmental colleges for the 3rd of July[189], only twenty-seven days before the death of the Elder Branch.

The parties, all exceedingly excited, drove everything to extremes: the Ultra-Royalists spoke of giving the Crown the dictatorship; the Republicans dreamt of a republic under a directorate or convention. The Tribune[190], the organ of the latter party, appeared, and went beyond the National. The great majority of the country was still in favour of the Legitimate Monarchy, but with concessions and enfranchisement from Court influences; every ambition was aroused, every one hoped to become a minister: storms hatch insects.

Those who wished to force Charles X. to become a constitutional monarch thought they were right. They believed the Legitimacy to be deep-rooted: they had forgotten the weakness of the man; the Royalty might be driven, the King could not: it was the individual that ruined us, not the institution.

The deputies of the new Chamber arrived in Paris: of the 221, 202 had been re-elected; the Opposition numbered 270 votes: the Ministry 145; the Crown Party was therefore lost. The natural result would have been the resignation of the Ministry: Charles X. was stubbornly determined to defy everything, and the _coup d'État_ was resolved upon.

[Sidenote: Dieppe and back to Paris.]

I left for Dieppe at four o'clock in the morning on the 26th of July, the very day on which the Ordinances appeared. I was in fairly good spirits, delighted that I was going to see the sea again, and I was followed, at some distance, by a terrible storm. I supped and slept at Rouen without learning anything, regretting that I was not able to visit Saint-Ouen and kneel before the beautiful Virgin in the Museum, in memory of Raphael and Rome. I arrived at Dieppe the next day, the 27th, at mid-day. I went to the hotel where M. le Comte de Boissy[191], my former secretary of legation, had engaged rooms for me. I dressed and went to call on Madame Récamier. She occupied an apartment whose windows looked out on the sands. I spent a few hours in talking and watching the waves. Suddenly Hyacinthe appeared; he brought me a letter which M. de Boissy had received, telling with great praises of the issue of the Ordinances. A moment later, my old friend Ballanche entered; he had come straight from the diligence and held the newspapers in his hand. I opened the _Moniteur_ and read the official documents, without believing my eyes. One more government which deliberately flung itself from the towers of Notre-Dame! I told Hyacinthe to ask for horses, in order to set out for Paris again. I climbed back into my carriage, at seven o'clock, leaving my friends in anxiety. It is true that, for a month past, people had been murmuring something about a _coup d'État_, but no one had taken any notice of the rumour, which seemed absurd. Charles X. had lived on the illusions of the Throne: a kind of mirage is formed around princes, and it imposes upon them by displacing the object and making them see chimerical landscapes in the sky.

I took away the _Moniteur_ with me. So soon as it was light, on the 28th, I read, re-read and commented on the Ordinances[192]. The Report to the King which served as a preamble struck me in two ways: the observations on the drawbacks of the press were just; but, at the same time, the author of those observations[193] displayed a complete ignorance of the actual state of society. No doubt ministers, to whatever shade of opinion they have belonged, have, since 1814, been harassed by the newspapers; no doubt the press tends to subdue the Sovereignty, to force the Royalty and the Chambers to obey it; no doubt, during the last days of the Restoration, the press, listening only to the dictates of its own passion, disregarding the interests and the honour of France, attacked the Algerian Expedition, enlarged on the causes, the means, the preparations, the chances of failure; it divulged the secrets of our armament, instructed the enemy of the state of our forces, enumerated our troops and vessels, and even indicated the point selected for the disembarkation. Would the Cardinal de Richelieu and Bonaparte have brought Europe to the feet of France, if the mystery of their negociations had been thus revealed in advance, or the halting-places of their armies set forth?

All this is both true and hateful; but the remedy? The press is an element till lately unknown, a force formerly unheard of, now introduced into the world; it is speech in the shape of a thunder-bolt; it is the electricity of society. How can you prevent its existence? The more you aim at compressing it, the more violent the explosion. You must therefore bring yourself to live with it, as you live with the steam-engine. You must learn to use it while making it safe, either by gradually weakening it by common and domestic usage, or by gradually assimilating your manners and laws to the principles which will henceforth govern humanity. One proof of the powerlessness of the press in certain cases is derived from the very reproach which you made against it in regard to the Algerian Expedition: you have taken Algiers, in spite of the liberty of the press, in the same way as I had caused the war with Spain to be waged, in 1823, under the hottest fire of that liberty.

But what is not to be endured in the Report of the ministers is that shameless pretension, namely, that "the King has a power pre-existent to the laws." What, then, is the meaning of constitutions? Why deceive the nations with sham guarantees, if the monarch is able at will to alter the order of established government? And yet the signatories of the Report are so firmly persuaded of what they say that they hardly quote Article XIV.[194] to which I had long been prophesying that "they would confiscate the Charter;" they recall it, but only for memory, and as a superfluity of right of which they had no need.

[Sidenote: The Ordinances of July.]

The first Ordinance established the suppression of the liberty of the press in all its parts; this is the quintessence of all that had been elaborated during the last fifteen years in the dark closet of the police.

The second Ordinance reforms the law of election. Thus the two first liberties, the liberty of the press and electoral liberty, were torn up by the roots: and that, not by an iniquitous and yet legal act, emanating from a corrupt legislative power, but by "ordinances," as in the days of the King's will and pleasure. And five men, not lacking common-sense, were, with unexampled levity, precipitating themselves, their master, the Monarchy, France and Europe into a whirlpool. I did not know what was happening in Paris. I was hoping that a resistance, without overturning the throne, would have obliged the Crown to dismiss the ministers and recall the Ordinances. In the event of the triumph of the latter, I had resolved not to submit to them, but to write and speak against those unconstitutional measures.

If the members of the Diplomatic Body exercised no direct influence upon the Ordinances, they favoured them with their wishes; absolute Europe abhorred our Charter. When the news of the Ordinances reached Berlin and Vienna, where, for twenty-four hours, men believed in their success, M. Ancillon exclaimed that Europe was saved, and M. de Metternich displayed unspeakable delight. Soon, having learnt the truth, the latter was as much dismayed as he had been overjoyed: he declared that he had been mistaken, that public opinion was decidedly liberal, and he was already accustoming himself to the idea of an Austrian Constitution.

The nominations of councillors of State following upon the Ordinances of July throw some light upon the persons who, in the ante-chambers, gave their assistance to the Ordinances either with their advice or their composition. You there see the names of the men most opposed to the representative system. Was it in the King's own closet, under the Monarch's eyes, that those fatal documents were drawn up? Was it in M. de Polignac's closet? Was it in a meeting of ministers alone, or assisted by a few anti-constitutional pudding-heads? Was it "under seal," in some secret sitting of the "Ten," that those decrees were minuted by virtue of which the Legitimate Monarchy was condemned to be strangled on the "Bridge of Sighs?" Was the idea M. de Polignac's alone? Perhaps history will never tell us.

On arriving at Gisors, I learnt that Paris had risen, and heard alarming things said, which proved how seriously the Charter was taken by people throughout France. At Pontoise, they had still more recent, but confused and contradictory news. At Herblay, there were no horses at the post-office. I waited nearly an hour. They advised me to avoid Saint-Denis, because I should find barricades there. At Courbevoie, the postillion had already left off his jacket with the fleurs-de-lys on the buttons. They had fired that morning at a calash which he was driving in Paris through the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. In consequence, he told me that he would not take me by that avenue, but that he would make for the Barrière du Trocadéro, to the right of the Barrière de l'Étoile. This barrier gives a view over Paris. I saw the tricolour flag waving; I judged that it was a case not of a riot, but of a revolution. I had a presentiment that my role was about to change: that, having hurried back to defend the public liberties, I should be obliged to defend the Royalty. Here and there, clouds of white smoke rose among blocks of houses. I heard some cannon-shots and musketry-fire mixed with the droning of the tocsin. It seemed to me that I saw the fall of the old Louvre from the top of the waste upland destined by Napoleon for the site of the palace of the King of Rome. The spot of observation offered one of those philosophical consolations which one ruin carries to another.

My carriage went down the hill. I crossed the Pont d'Iéna and drove up the paved avenue skirting the Champ de Mars. All was solitary. I found a picket of cavalry posted before the railings of the Military School; the men looked sad and as though forgotten there. We took the Boulevard des Invalides and the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. I met a few people on foot who looked surprised to see a carriage driven post as at an ordinary time. The Boulevard d'Enfer was obstructed by felled elm-trees.

In my street[195], my neighbours were glad to see me arrive: I seemed to them a protection for the quarter. Madame de Chateaubriand was both pleased and alarmed at my return.

[Sidenote: The revolution of July.]

On Thursday morning, the 29th of July, I wrote Madame Récamier, at Dieppe, a letter prolonged by postscripts:

"_Thursday morning_, 29 _July_ 1830.

"I write to you without knowing whether my letter will reach you, for the post no longer goes out.

"I entered Paris amid the booming of guns, the rattle of musketry, the clanging of the tocsin. This morning the tocsin is still sounding, but I no longer hear any firing; it seems that they are organizing themselves, and that resistance will continue until the Ordinances are repealed. There you see the immediate result (without speaking of the definite result) of the act of perjury the blame for which, at least in appearance, the ministers have allowed to fall upon the Crown!

"The National Guard, the Polytechnic School, all have taken part in the business. I have seen no one yet. You can imagine in what a state I found Madame de Chateaubriand. People who, like her, have seen the 10th of August and the 2nd of September have remained under the impression of terror. One regiment, the 5th of the Line, has already gone over to the Charter. M. de Polignac is certainly most guilty; his want of capacity is a poor excuse; ambition for which one has not the talent is a crime. They say that the Court is at Saint-Cloud and ready to leave.

"I do not speak to you of myself; my position is painful, but clear. I shall betray neither the King nor the Charter, neither the Legitimate Power nor liberty. I have therefore nothing to say or do, but to wait and weep for my country. God knows now what is going to happen in the provinces: already they are talking of an insurrection at Rouen. On the other side, the Congregation will arm the Chouans and the Vendée. On what small things do empires depend! An Ordinance and half-a-dozen stupid or unscrupulous ministers are enough to turn the most peaceful and flourishing country into the most disturbed and unhappy country."

"The firing is recommencing. It appears they are attacking the Louvre, where the King's troops have entrenched themselves. The suburb in which I live is beginning to rise in insurrection. They speak of a provisional government with General Gérard[196], the Duc de Choiseul[197] and M. de La Fayette at its head.

"This letter will probably not leave, Paris having been declared in a state of siege. Marshal Marmont is commanding in the King's name. He is said to be killed, but I do not believe it. Try not to alarm yourself unduly. May God protect you! We shall meet again!

"_Friday._

"This letter was written yesterday; it could not be sent. All is over: the popular victory is complete; the King yields on all points, but I fear they will not go far beyond the concessions made by the Crown. I wrote to His Majesty this morning. For the rest, I have a complete plan of sacrifices for the future which pleases me. We will talk of it when you are here.

"I am going to post this letter myself and to stroll through Paris."

The Ordinances, dated 25 July, were published in the _Moniteur_ of the 26th. Their secret had been so profoundly kept that neither the Maréchal Duc de Raguse, who was major-general of the Guard on duty, nor M. Mangin[198], the Prefect of Police, had been taken into confidence. The Prefect of the Seine[199] heard of the Ordinances only through the _Moniteur_: the same was the case with the Under-secretary of State for War[200]; and this in spite of the fact that it was those several officials who disposed of the different forces of the army. The Prince de Polignac, who held M. de Bourmont's portfolio ad interim, concerned himself so little with this trifling matter of the Ordinances that he spent the day, on the 26th, presiding over an adjudication at the War Office.

The King left on a hunting-party on the 26th, before the _Moniteur_ had reached Saint-Cloud, and did not return from Rambouillet till midnight.

At last the Duc de Raguse received this note from M. de Polignac:

"Your Excellency is aware of the extraordinary measures which the King, in his wisdom and in his love for his people, has thought it necessary to take for the maintenance of the rights of his crown and of public order. In these important circumstances, His Majesty relies on your zeal to ensure order and tranquillity throughout the extent of your command."

[Sidenote: Action of the press.]

This audacity displayed by the weakest men that ever lived against the force that was about to pulverize an empire can be explained only as being a sort of hallucination resulting from the counsels of a wretched set which was no longer to be found at the hour of danger. The newspaper-editors, after consulting Messieurs Dupin, Odilon Barrot, Barthe[201] and Mérilhou[202], resolved to bring out their impressions without authorization, in order to compel their seizure and to plead the illegality of the Ordinances. They met at the office of the _National_: M. Thiers drew up a protest which was signed by forty-four editors[203] and which appeared, on the morning of the 27th, in the _National_ and the _Temps._

In the evening, a few deputies met at M. de Laborde's[204]. They agreed to meet again the next day at M. Casimir Périer's. There appeared, for the first time, one of the three powers that were to occupy the scene: the Monarchy was in the Chamber of Deputies, the Usurpation at the Palais-Royal, the Republic at the Hôtel de Ville. Crowds gathered at the Palais-Royal in the evening; stones were thrown at M. de Polignac's carriage. The Duc de Raguse having seen the King at Saint-Cloud, on his return from Rambouillet, the King asked him the news from Paris:

"The stocks have fallen."

"How much?" asked the Dauphin

"Three francs," answered the marshal.

"They will go up again," replied the Dauphin, and every one went away.

The day of the 27th began badly. The King invested the Duc de Raguse with the command of Paris. This was relying on bad fortune. The marshal came to instal himself at the Staff-office of the Guard on the Place du Carrousel, at one o'clock. M. Mangin sent to seize the printing-presses of the _National_; M. Carrel resisted; Messieurs Mignet and Thiers, thinking the game lost, disappeared for two days: M. Thiers went to hide in the Montmorency Valley with a Madame de Courchamp[205], a relation of the two Messieurs Becquet[206], of whom one had worked on the _National_, the other on the _Journal des Débats._

At the _Temps_, the matter assumed a more serious complexion: the real hero of the journalists is incontestably M. Coste[207].

In 1823, M. Coste was managing the _Tablettes historiques_[208]: one of his collaborators accusing him of having sold that paper, he fought a duel and received a sword-thrust M. Coste was presented to me at the Foreign Office; discussing the liberty of the press with him, I said:

"Monsieur, you know how I love and respect that liberty; but how would you have me defend it to Louis XVIII., when every day you attack royalty and religion? I beg you, in your own interest and so as to leave me full strength, to desist from undermining ramparts which are already three-parts demolished, and which really a man of courage ought to blush to attack. Let us make a bargain: do you cease falling foul of a few feeble old men whom the Throne and the sanctuary are hardly able to protect; in exchange I give you my own person. Attack me day and night; say anything about me that you please: I shall never make a complaint; I shall appreciate your legitimate and constitutional attack on the minister, so long as you leave the King out of it."

M. Coste has retained a grateful memory of his interview with me.

[Sidenote: Parade of constitutionalism.]

A parade of constitutionalism took place at the office of the _Temps_ between M. Baude[209] and a commissary of police[210].

The Attorney-General[211] issued forty-four warrants against the signatories to the protest of the journalists.

At two o'clock, the monarchical faction of the revolution met at M. Périer's[212], as had been agreed upon the day before: they came to no conclusion. The deputies adjourned to the morrow, the 28th, at M. Audry de Puyravault's[213]. M. Casimir Périer, a man of order and wealth, did not wish to fall into the hands of the people; he continued still to cherish the hope of an arrangement with the Legitimate Royalty; he said sharply to M. de Schonen[214]:

"You ruin us by departing from lawfulness; you make us give up a superb position."

This spirit of lawfulness prevailed everywhere: it showed itself at two opposite meetings, one at M. Cadet-Gassicourt's[215] the other at General Gourgaud's. M. Périer belonged to that middle class which had constituted itself the heir of the people and the soldier. He had courage, stability of ideas: he flung himself bravely across the revolutionary torrent to dam it; but his life was too much taken up with his health and he was too careful of his fortune:

"What can you do with a man," said M. Decazes to me, "who is always examining his tongue in a looking-glass?"

The mob increased in size and began to appear under arms. The officer of the Gendarmerie came to inform the Maréchal de Raguse that he had not enough men and that he feared lest he should be driven back: then the marshal made his military dispositions.

It was half-past four in the evening of the 27th before orders reached the barracks to take up arms. The Paris Gendarmerie, supported by a few detachments of the Guard, tried to restore the traffic in the Rues Richelieu and Saint-Honoré. One of these detachments was assailed, in the Rue du Duc de Bordeaux[216], by a shower of stones. The leader of the detachment refrained from firing, when a shot from the Hôtel Royal, in the Rue des Pyramides, decided the question: it appeared that a certain Mr. Folks, who lived at this hotel, had taken up his gun and fired at the Guards from his window. The soldiers replied with a volley at the house, and Mr. Folks fell dead with his two servants. This is the way in which those English, who live safe and sheltered in their island, go to carry revolutions to other nations; you find them in the four corners of the world mixed up in quarrels with which they have no concern: so long as they can sell a piece of calico, what care they about plunging a nation into every kind of calamity? What right had this Mr. Folks to shoot at French soldiers? Was it the British Constitution that Charles X. had violated? If anything could stigmatize the July fighting, it would be that it was begun by a bullet fired by an Englishman[217].

[Sidenote: The first shot fired.]

The first fighting, which began the day's work of the 27th a little before five o'clock in the evening, ceased at nightfall. The gunsmiths and sword-cutlers gave up their arms to the mob; the street-lamps were broken or remained unlighted; the tricolour flag was hoisted in the darkness on the towers of Notre-Dame: the seizure of the guard-houses, the capture of the arsenal and the powder-magazines, the disarming of the fixed posts, all this was effected without opposition at daybreak on the 28th, and all was finished at eight o'clock.

The democratic or proletarian party of the revolution, in blouses or half-naked, was under arms: it was not sparing of its misery or its rags. The mob, represented by electors whom it chose out of different bands, had succeeded in having a meeting called at M. Cadet-Gassicourt's.

The party of the Usurpation did not yet show itself: its head, hiding outside Paris, did not know whether he should go to Saint-Cloud or to the Palais-Royal. The middle-class or monarchical party, the deputies deliberated and were unwilling to be drawn into the movement.

M. de Polignac went to Saint-Cloud and, at five o'clock in the morning, on the 28th, made the King sign the Ordinance placing Paris in a stage of siege.

On the 28th, the groups formed again in greater numbers; already the cry of "Liberty for ever! Down with the Bourbons!" was mingled with the cry of "The Charter for ever!" which was heard on every side. They also shouted, "Long live the Emperor! Long live the Black Prince!" the mysterious Prince of Darkness who appears to the popular imagination in all revolutions. Memories and passions had come down upon the crowd; they pulled down and burned the French arms; they hung them to the ropes of the shattered street-lanterns; they tore the badges with the _fleurs-de-lys_ from the guards of the diligences and the postmen; the notaries removed their scutcheons, the bailiffs their badges, the carriers their stamps, the Court purveyors their coats of arms. Those who but lately had covered the Napoleonic eagles, painted in oil-colours, with the _fleurs-de-lys_ of the Bourbons in distemper needed only a sponge to wipe away their loyalty: nowadays one effaces gratitude and empires with a few drops of water.

The Maréchal de Raguse wrote to the King that it was urgent that methods of pacification should be taken and that the next day, the 29th, would be too late. A messenger had come from the Prefect of Police to ask the marshal if it was true that Paris had been declared in a state of siege: the marshal, who knew nothing about it, was astonished; he hurried to the President of the Council; there[218] he found the ministers assembled, and M. de Polignac handed him the Ordinance. Because the man who had trodden the world under foot had laid towns and provinces under martial law, Charles X. thought that he could imitate him. The ministers told the marshal that they were coming to establish themselves at the Head-quarters of the Guard.

No orders having arrived from Saint-Cloud, at nine o'clock in the morning, on the 28th, when it was no longer time to hold everything, but to recapture everything, the marshal ordered the troops, which had already shown themselves in part on the preceding day, to leave barracks. No precautions had been taken to send provisions to the Carrousel, the head-quarters. The bakehouse, which they had forgotten to have sufficiently guarded, was carried by the mob. M. le Duc de Raguse, a man of intelligence and merit, a brave soldier, a clever but unlucky general, proved for the thousandth time that military genius is not enough to overcome civil troubles: the first-come police-officer would have known better what was to be done than the marshal. Perhaps also his intellect was paralyzed by his memories; he remained as though stifled under the weight of the fatality of his name.

[Sidenote: The guards attacked.]

Under the command of the Comte de Saint-Chamans[219], the first column of the Guard set out from the Madeleine to proceed along the boulevards to the Bastille. No sooner had they started, than the platoon commanded by M. Sala[220] was attacked; the royalist officer briskly repulsed the assault. As they advanced, the posts of communication left behind on the road, too weak and too far removed one from the other, were cut by the people and separated by felled trees and barricades. An affray took place, attended with bloodshed, at the Portes Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin. Passing by the scene of the future exploits of Fieschi[221], M. de Saint-Chamans encountered numerous groups of women and men on the Place de la Bastille. He called upon them to disperse, distributing some money among them; but the people persisted in firing from the surrounding houses. He was obliged to renounce his intention of reaching the Hôtel de Ville by the Rue Saint-Antoine and, after crossing the Pont d'Austerlitz, returned to the Carrousel along the south boulevards. Turenne, acting on behalf of the mother of the infant Louis XIV., had been more fortunate before the Bastille, then not yet demolished.

The column sent to occupy the Hôtel de Ville[222] followed the Quais des Tuileries, du Louvre and de l'École, crossed the first half of the Pont-Neuf, took the Quai de l'Horloge and the Marché-aux-Fleurs, and reached the Place de Grève by the Pont Notre-Dame. Two platoons of Guards effected a diversion by filing towards the new suspension bridge. A battalion of the 15th Light Infantry supported the Guards, and was to leave two platoons on the Marché-aux-Fleurs.

There was some fighting as they crossed the Seine on the Pont Notre-Dame. The mob, headed by a drum, bravely faced the Guards. The officer in command of the Royal Artillery explained to the mass of people that they were exposing themselves uselessly and that, as they had no guns, they would be shot down without the smallest chance of succeeding. The rabble persisted; the guns were fired. The soldiers streamed on to the quays and the Place de Grève, where two other platoons of Guards arrived by the Pont d'Arcole. They had been obliged to force their way through crowds of students from the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. The Hôtel de Ville was occupied.

A barricade rose at the entrance to the Rue du Monton: a brigade of Swiss carried the barricade; the rabble, rushing up from the adjacent streets, recaptured its entrenchment with loud shouts. The barricade remained finally in the hands of the Guards.

In all those poor and popular quarters, they fought spontaneously, without after-thought: mocking, heedless, intrepid, French giddiness had mounted to all heads; glory, to our nation, has the lightness of champagne. The women at the windows encouraged the men in the streets; notes were written promising the marshal's baton to the first colonel who should go over to the people; clusters of men marched to the sound of a violin. It was a medley of tragic and clownish scenes, of mountebank and triumphant spectacles: one heard shouts of laughter and oaths in the midst of musket-shots and the dull roar of the crowd, across masses of smoke. With foraging-cap on head, bare-footed, improvised carmen, supplied with permits from unknown leaders, drove convoys of wounded through the combatants, who separated to let them pass.

In the wealthy quarters reigned a different spirit. The National Guards had resumed the uniforms of which they had been stripped, and assembled in large numbers at the Mayor's Office of the 1st Ward to preserve order. In these engagements, the Guards suffered more than the people, because they were exposed to the fire of invisible enemies in the houses. Others shall give the names of the drawing-room heroes who, safely ambushed behind a shutter or chimney-pot, amused themselves by shooting down the officers of the Guards whom they recognised. In the streets, the animosity of the labourer and the soldier did not go beyond striking the blow: once wounded, they mutually aided one another. The mob saved several victims. Two officers, M. de Goyon and M. Rivaux, after an heroic defense, owed their lives to the generosity of the victors. Captain Kaumann of the Guards received a blow on the head from an iron bar: dazed and with his eyes filled with blood, he struck up with his sword the bayonets of his soldiers who were taking aim at the workman.

[Sidenote: Chivalry on both sides.]

The Guard was full of Bonaparte's grenadiers. Several officers lost their lives, among others Lieutenant Noirot, a man of extraordinary valour, who in 1813 had received the cross of the Legion of Honour from Prince Eugene for a feat of arms accomplished in one of the redoubts at Caldiera. Colonel de Pleineselve, mortally wounded at the Porte Saint-Martin, had been in the wars of the Empire in Holland, in Spain, with the Grand Army and in the Imperial Guard. At the Battle of Leipzig, he took the Austrian General Merfeld prisoner. Carried by his soldiers to the Hôpital du Gros-Caillou, he refused to have his wounds dressed until all the other wounded of July had been treated. Dr. Larrey[223], whom he had met on other battle-fields, amputated his leg at the thigh; it was too late to save him. Happy those noble adversaries, who had seen so many cannon-balls pass over their heads, if they did not fall before the bullet of one of those liberated convicts whom justice has found again, since the day of victory, in the ranks of the victors! Those galley-slaves were unable to pollute the national republican triumph; they prejudiced only the royalty of Louis-Philippe. Thus perished obscurely, in the streets of Paris, the survivors of those famous soldiers who had escaped from the cannon of the Moskowa, of Lutzen and Leipzig: we massacred under Charles X. those heroes whom we had so greatly admired under Napoleon. They wanted but one man: that man had disappeared at St. Helena.

At fall of night, a non-commissioned officer in disguise came to bring orders to the troops at the Hôtel de Ville to fall back upon the Tuileries. The retreat was made hazardous because of the wounded, whom they did not wish to abandon, and of the artillery, which it was difficult to convey across the barricades. Nevertheless it was effected without accident. When the troops returned from the different quarters of Paris, they thought that the King and Dauphin had come back also: looking in vain for the White Flag on the Pavillon de l'Horloge, they uttered the energetic language of the camps.

It is not true, as I have shown, that the Hôtel de Ville was captured by the Guards from the people and recaptured from the Guards by the people. When the Guards entered, they encountered no resistance, for there was no one there: the Prefect himself had gone. This boasting weakens and casts a doubt upon the real dangers. The Guards were badly engaged in tortuous streets; the Line, at first by its show of neutrality, and later by its defection, completed the harm which plans fine in theory, but unfeasible in practice, had begun. The 50th Regiment of the Line had arrived at the Hôtel de Ville during the fighting; ready to drop with fatigue, they hastened to retire to the inside of the Hôtel, and lent their exhausted comrades their unused and useless cartridges.

The Swiss battalion which had been left on the Marché des Innocents was released by another Swiss battalion: together they came out at the Quai de l'École and stood in the Louvre.

For the rest, barricades are entrenchments in keeping with the Parisian character; they are found in all our troubles, from Charles IX. to our own times:

"The people," says L'Éstoile, "seeing those forces disposed over the streets, began to be agitated and made barricades in the manner that all know: many Swiss were slain, who were buried in a ditch dug in the enclosure of Notre-Dame; the Duke of Guyse passing through the streets, all vied in crying loudly, 'Long live Guyse!' and quoth he, doffing his large hat:

"'My friends, it is enough; gentlemen, it is too much; shout, "Long live the King!"'"

Why do our barricades, which led to such mighty results, gain so little in the telling, while the barricades of 1588, which produced nothing, are so interesting to read of? This is due to the difference in centuries and persons: the sixteenth century carried all before it; the nineteenth century has left all behind it: M. de Puyravault is not quite the Balafré.

While this fighting was continuing, the civil and political revolution followed the military revolution on parallel lines. The soldiers locked up in the Abbaye were set at liberty; the debtors at Sainte-Pélagie escaped and the political prisoners were released: a revolution is a jubilee; it absolves from every crime, permitting greater crimes.

The Ministers sat in council at the Staff Office: they resolved to arrest Messieurs Laffitte[224], La Fayette, Gérard, Marchais[225], Salverte[226] and Audry de Puyravault as leaders of the movement; the marshal gave the order for their arrest; but, when, later, they appeared before him as delegates, he did not think it consistent with his honour to put his order into execution.

[Sidenote: Meetings of peers and deputies.]

A gathering of the Monarchical Party, consisting of peers and deputies, met at M. Guizot's: the Duc de Broglie was there, as were Messieurs Thiers and Mignet, who had made their reappearance, and M. Carrel, although he held different ideas. It was there that the name of the Duc d'Orléans was first pronounced by the Usurpation Party. M. Thiers and M. Mignet went to General Sébastiani to talk to him of the Prince. The general replied in an evasive manner; the Duc d'Orléans, he asserted, had never entertained such designs and had not authorized him to do anything.

About mid-day, on the same day, the 28th, the general meeting of the deputies took place at M. Audry de Puyravault's[227]. M. de La Fayette, the leader of the Republican Party, had reached Paris on the 27th; M. Laffitte, the leader of the Orleanist Party, had arrived on the 27th, at night; he went to the Palais-Royal, where he found no one; he sent to Neuilly: the King in embryo was not there.

At M. de Puyravault's, they discussed the proposal of a protest against the Ordinances. This protest, which was of a more than moderate character, left the great questions untouched.

M. Casimir Périer was in favour of hastening to the Duc de Raguse; while the five deputies selected were preparing to leave, M. Arago[228] was with the marshal: he had decided, on receipt of a note from Madame de Boigne, to be before-hand with the delegates. He represented to the marshal the necessity for putting an end to the troubles of the Capital. M. de Raguse went to obtain intelligence at M. de Polignac's; the latter, hearing of the hesitation among the troops, declared that, if they went over to the people, they were to be fired on like the insurgents. General de Tromelin[229] was present at the conversation and flew into a passion with General d'Ambrugeac[230]. Then came the deputation. M. Laffitte spoke:

"We come," he said, "to ask you to stop bloodshed. If the fighting continues, it will carry with it not only the most frightful calamities, but a real revolution."

The marshal confined himself to a question of military honour, maintaining that it was the duty of the people first to cease fighting; nevertheless he added this postscript to a letter which he was writing to the King:

"I think it is urgent that Your Majesty should avail yourself without delay of the overtures that have been made."

Colonel Komierowski, aide-de-camp to the Duc de Raguse, was shown into the King's closet at Saint-Cloud, and handed him the letter; the King said to him:

"I will read this letter."

The colonel withdrew and waited orders; seeing that they were not forthcoming, he begged M. le Duc de Duras to go to the King to ask for them. The duke replied that etiquette made it impossible for him to enter the closet. At last M. Komierowski was sent for by the King and told to enjoin the marshal "to hold out."

General Vincent on his side hurried down to Saint-Cloud; he forced the door which was denied him, and told the King that all was lost:

"My dear fellow," replied Charles X., "you are a good general, but these are things that you know nothing about."

The 29th saw new combatants enter the field: the pupils of the Polytechnic School, who were in correspondence with one of their old schoolfellows, M. Charras[231], broke bounds and sent four of their number, Messieurs Lothon, Perthelin, Pinsonnière and Tourneaux to offer their services to Messieurs Laffitte, Périer and La Fayette. These young men, distinguished by their studies, had already made themselves known to the Allies, when the latter appeared before Paris in 1814; during the Three Days, they became the leaders of the people, who, with perfect simplicity, placed them at their head. Some repaired to the Place de l'Odéon, others to the Palais-Royal and the Tuileries.

[Sidenote: The King's obstinacy.]

The Order of the Day published on the morning of the 29th offended the Guards: it announced that the King, wishing to give a proof of his satisfaction to his brave servants, awarded them six weeks' pay; an impropriety which the French soldier resented: it was placing him on a level with the English, who refuse to march or who mutiny, if their pay is in arrears.

During the night of the 28th, the people took up the street-pavement, at each twenty yards' distance, and, at day-break the next morning, there were four thousand barricades standing in Paris.

The Palais-Bourbon was guarded by the Line, the Louvre by two Swiss battalions, the Rue de la Paix, the Place Vendôme and the Rue Castiglione by the 5th and 53rd Regiments of the Line. About twelve hundred infantrymen had arrived from Saint-Denis, Versailles and Rueil.

The military position was better: the troops were more concentrated, and big empty spaces had to be crossed to reach them. General Exelmans[232], who thought well of the dispositions, came at eleven o'clock to place his courage and experience at the disposal of the Maréchal de Raguse, while on his side General Pajol[233] presented himself before the deputies to take command of the National Guard.

The ministers had the idea of summoning the King's Court to the Tuileries, so completely out of touch were they with the movement surrounding them! The marshal pressed the President of the Council to withdraw the Ordinances. During the interview, M. de Polignac was asked for; he went out, and returned with M. Bertier[234], son of the first victim sacrificed in 1789. M. Bertier had been through Paris, and declared that all was going well for the royal cause: what a fatal thing are those families which have a right to vengeance, cast into the tomb, as they were, in our early troubles and conjured up by our later misfortunes! Those misfortunes were novelties no longer; since 1793, Paris was accustomed to witness the passing of events and kings.

While all was going so well according to the Royalists, the defection was announced of the 5th and 53rd of the Line, who were fraternizing with the people.

[Sidenote: Butchery at the Louvre.]

The Duc de Raguse proposed a suspension of hostilities: it took place at some points and was not carried out at others. The marshal had sent for one of the two Swiss battalions posted at the Louvres. They dispatched to him the battalion which lined the colonnade. The Parisians, seeing the colonnade deserted, came up to the walls and entered by the masked doors which lead from the Jardin de l'Infante to the interior; they made for the windows and opened fire on the battalion standing in the court-yard. Under the terror of the memory of the 10th of August, the Swiss rushed from the Palace and hurled themselves into their battalion, which was posted opposite the Parisian outposts; here, however, the suspension of hostilities was being observed. The mob, which from the Louvre had reached the gallery of the Museum, began to fire from the midst of the master-pieces on the Lancers drawn up in the Carrousel. The Parisian posts, carried away by this example, broke off the suspension of hostilities. Flung headlong under the Arc de Triomphe, the Swiss drove the Lancers to the porch of the Pavillon de l'Horloge and debouched in confusion into the garden of the Tuileries. Young Farcy[235] met his death in this scuffle: his name is written up at the corner of the café where he fell; a beet-factory stands at Thermopylae to-day. The Swiss had three or four men killed or wounded: this small loss was changed into a frightful butchery.

The mob entered the Tuileries, with Messieurs Thomas[236], Bastide[237] and Guinard[238], by the Pont-Royal gate. A tricolour flag was planted on the Pavillon de l'Horloge, as in the time of Bonaparte, apparently in remembrance of liberty. Furniture was broken up, pictures slashed with sword-cuts; in a cupboard they found the King's hunting journal, with particulars of his fine exploits against the partridges: an old custom of the gamekeepers of the Monarchy. They put a corpse on the empty throne, in the Throne Room: that would be a formidable thing, if the French of to-day were not always playing at drama. The artillery museum, at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, was pillaged, and the centuries passed down the river, under the helmet of Godfrey of Bouillon and with the lance of Francis I.

Then the Duc de Raguse left the Staff Office, leaving 120,000 francs in bags behind him. He went through the Rue de Rivoli and entered the Tuileries Gardens. He gave the order for the troops to retire, first to the Champs Élysées, and next to the Étoile. It was believed that peace was made, that the Dauphin was coming; some carriages from the Royal Mews and a baggage-wagon were seen to cross the Place Louis XV.: it was the ministers going after their works.

On arriving at the Étoile, Marmont received a letter: it informed him that the King had given M. le Dauphin the command-in-chief of the troops, and that he, the marshal, would serve under his orders.

A company of the 3rd Guards had been forgotten in the house of a hatter in the Rue de Rohan; after a long resistance the house was carried. Captain Meunier, wounded in three places, jumped from a third-floor window, fell on a roof below, and was taken to the Hôpital du Grand-Caillou: he has survived. The Caserne Babylone, attacked between twelve and one in the day by three pupils of the Polytechnic School, Vaneau, Lacroix and Ouvrier, was guarded only by a depot of Swiss recruits numbering about a hundred men; Major Dufay, an officer of French descent, was in command: he had served with us for thirty years; he had been an actor in the great exploits of the Republic and the Empire. He was called upon to surrender, refused all conditions, and locked himself up in his barrack. Young Vaneau was killed. Some firemen set fire to the barrack-door, which fell in pieces; at once Major Dufay issued through this mouth of flame, followed by his highlanders, with fixed bayonets. He fell, struck by the musket-shot of a neighbouring publican: his death saved his Swiss recruits; they joined the different corps to which they belonged.

M. le Duc de Mortemart[239] arrived at Saint-Cloud on Wednesday the 28th, at ten o'clock in the evening, to take up his service as Captain of the Hundred Swiss: he was not able to speak to the King till the next day. At eleven o'clock, on the 29th, he made a few efforts to induce Charles X. to recall the Ordinances; the King said to him:

"I do not want to climb into the cart, like my brother; I will not go back by a foot."

A few minutes later, he was to go back by a kingdom!

[Sidenote: Charles X. and his ministers.]

The ministers had arrived: Messieurs de Sémonville, d'Argout[240], Vitrolles were there. M. de Sémonville related that he had had a long conversation with the King; that he had not succeeded in shaking his resolution until he made an appeal to his heart by speaking to him of the dangers to which Madame la Dauphine was exposed. He said to him: "To-morrow, at noon, there will be no King, no Dauphin, no Duc de Bordeaux."

And the King replied:

"You will surely give me till one o'clock."

I do not believe a word of all this. Bragging is our national fault; question a Frenchman and trust to his story: he will always have done everything.

The ministers went in to the King after M. de Sémonville; the Ordinances were revoked, the Ministry dissolved, M. de Mortemart appointed President of the new Council.

In the Capital, the Republican Party had at last run some one to earth. M. Baude, the man of the parade at the office of the _Temps_, going through the streets, had found the Hôtel de Ville occupied by only two men, M. Dubourg and M. Zimmer. He at once proclaimed himself the emissary of a "Provisional Government" which was coming to instal itself. He sent for the clerks of the Prefecture and ordered them to set to work as though M. de Chabrol were present. In governments which have become machines the weights are soon wound up again; every one hastens to take possession of the deserted places: this one made himself secretary-general, that other head of a division, a third took the accounts, a fourth appointed himself to the staff and distributed the places on the staff among his friends; there were some who went so far as to send for their beds, so as not to leave the spot and to be in a position to jump upon the first place that became vacant. M. Dubourg, nicknamed "General" Dubourg, and M. Zimmer were styled the heads of the "military" side of the "Provisional Government" M. Baude represented the "civil" side of this unknown government, took resolutions and issued proclamations. And yet placards had been seen which came from the Republican Party and which were the production of a different government, consisting of Messieurs de La Fayette, Gérard and de Choiseul. It is difficult to explain the association of the last name with the two others; besides, M. de Choiseul protested. This old Liberal, who, emigrating and shipwrecked at Calais, to save his life mimicked the stiffness of death[241], found no paternal home, on his return to France, save a box at the Opera.

At three o'clock in the afternoon came a new element of confusion. An Order of the Day summoned the deputies in Paris to the Hôtel de Ville, there to confer on the measures to be taken. The mayors were to be restored to their mayoralties; they were also to send one of their deputy-mayors to the Hôtel de Ville, in order to make up a "consultative commission" there. This Order was signed, "J. Baude, for the Provisional Government" and "Colonel Zimmer, by order of General Dubourg." This audacity on the part of three persons speaking in the name of a government that existed only in so far as it had placarded itself at the street-corners proves the rare intelligence of the French in revolution: such men as these are evidently leaders destined to sway other nations. What a misfortune that, in delivering us from a similar anarchy, Bonaparte should have snatched from us our liberty!

[Sidenote: Meeting at M. Laffitte's.]

The deputies had again met at M. Laffitte's[242]. M. de La Fayette, going back to 1789, declared that he would also go back to the command of the National Guard. This met with applause, and he proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville. The deputies nominated a "Municipal Commission" consisting of five members, Messieurs Casimir Périer, Laffitte, de Lobau[243], de Schonen and Audry de Puyravault. M. Odilon Barrot was elected secretary to the Commission, which installed itself at the Hôtel de Ville, as M. de La Fayette had done. All these sat promiscuously, beside the Provisional Government of M. Dubourg. M. Mauguin[244], sent as an emissary to the "Commission," remained with it. The friend of Washington ordered the black flag which had been hoisted by the ingenuity of M. Dubourg to be removed.

At half-past eight in the evening, M. de Sémonville, M. d'Argout and M. de Vitrolles arrived from Saint-Cloud. They had hastened to Paris immediately after hearing, at Saint-Cloud, of the repeal of the Ordinances, the dismissal of the old ministers and the appointment of M. de Mortemart to the Presidency of the Council. They appeared before the Municipal Commission in the quality of mandatories of the King. M. Mauguin asked the Grand Refendary if he had written powers; the Grand Refendary replied that "he had not thought of it." The negociations of the official commissaries went no further.

M. Laffitte, informed at the meeting at his house of what had taken place at Saint-Cloud, signed a permit for M. de Mortemart, adding that the deputies assembled at his house would wait for him until one o'clock in the morning. As the noble duke did not appear, the deputies went home.

M. Laffitte, left alone with M. Thiers, occupied himself with the Duc d'Orléans and the necessary proclamations. Fifty years of revolution in France had given the men of practice the facility for reorganizing governments and the men of theory the habit of refurbishing charters and preparing the cranes and cradles by which governments are hoisted up or let down.

On this same day, the 29th, the day after my return to Paris, I was not idle. My plan was fixed: I wanted to act, but only on an order, written in the King's own hand, which would give me the necessary powers to speak with the authorities of the moment; to meddle with everything and do nothing did not suit me. That I had argued rightly is proved by the affront received by Messieurs d'Argout, de Sémonville and de Vitrolles.

I therefore wrote to Charles X. at Saint-Cloud. M. de Givré undertook to carry my letter. I begged the King to instruct me as to his wishes. M. de Givré returned empty-handed. He had given my letter to M. le Duc de Duras, who had given it to the King, who sent me word that he had appointed M. de Mortemart his Prime Minister and asked me to arrange with him. Where to find the noble duke? I looked for him in vain on the evening of the 29th.

Rejected by Charles X., I turned my thoughts to the Chamber of Peers, which was able, as a sovereign court, to evoke a trial and adjust the difference. If it was not safe in Paris, it was at liberty to transfer itself to some distance, even to the King's side, and from there to pronounce a grand award. It had chances of success; there are always chances of success in courage. After all, had it succumbed, it would have undergone a defeat which would have been useful to the question of principle. But should I have found twenty men in that Chamber prepared to devote themselves? Of those twenty men, were there four who would have agreed with me on public liberty?

Aristocratic assemblies enjoy a glorious reign when they are sovereign and alone invested, _de jure et de facto_, with power: they offer the strongest guarantees; but, in mixed forms of government, they lose their value and become pitiful in times of great crisis. Weak against the king, they do not prevent despotism; weak against the people, they do not stop anarchy. In any public commotion, they redeem their existence only at the price of perjury or slavery. Did the House of Lords save Charles I.? Did it save Richard Cromwell[245], to whom it had taken the oath? Did it save James II.? Will it save the Hanoverian Princes to-day? Will it save itself? Those self-styled aristocratic counter-weights only disturb the balance and will sooner or later be flung out of the scale. An ancient and wealthy aristocracy, having the habit of business, has only one means of retaining power when the latter is escaping from it: that is, to cross over from the Capitol to the Forum and place itself at the head of the new movement, unless it think itself still strong enough to risk civil war.

While awaiting M. de Givré's return, I was pretty busy in defending my quarter. The suburbs, the quarrymen of Montrouge came crowding through the Barrière de l'Enfer. The latter resembled those quarrymen of Montmartre who caused such great alarm to Mademoiselle de Mornay when she was fleeing from the massacres of St. Bartholomew. As they passed before the community-house of the Missionaries, in my street, they entered it: a score of priests were obliged to take to flight; the haunt of those fanatics was philosophically pillaged, their beds and their books burnt in the street. This trifle has not been mentioned. Was there any need to trouble about what the priesthood might have lost? I gave hospitality to seven or eight fugitives; they remained for several days hidden under my roof. I obtained passports for them through the intermediary of my neighbour, M. Arago, and they went elsewhere to preach the Word of God: _utilis populis fuga sanctorum._

[Sidenote: The Municipal Commission.]

The Municipal Commission, established at the Hôtel de Ville, appointed the Baron Louis Provisional Commissary of Finance, M. Baude Minister of the Interior, M. Mérilhou Minister of Justice, gave M. Chardel[246] the Post Office, M. Marchal[247] the Telegraphs, M. Bavoux[248] the Police, M. de Laborde the Prefecture of the Seine. Thus the "voluntary" Provisional Government found itself destroyed in reality by the promotion of M. Baude, who had created himself a member of that government. The shops were opened again; the public services resumed their course.

At the meeting at M. Laffitte's, it had been decided that the deputies should assemble, at noon, at the palace of the Chamber: some thirty or thirty-five met there, under the presidency of M. Laffitte. M. Bérard[249] announced that he had met Messieurs d'Argout, de Forbin-Janson[250] and de Mortemart on their way to M. Laffitte's, thinking that they would find the deputies there; that he had invited those gentlemen to follow him to the Chamber, but that M. le Duc de Mortemart, overwhelmed with fatigue, had gone away to see M. de Sémonville. M. de Mortemart, according to M. Bérard, said that he had a signature in blank and that the King consented to everything.

In fact, M. de Mortemart brought five Ordinances: instead of communicating them at once to the deputies, he was obliged by his lassitude to go back to the Luxembourg. At mid-day he sent the Ordinances to M. Sauvo[251]; the latter replied that he could not publish them in the _Moniteur_ without the authorization of the Chamber of Deputies or the Municipal Commission.

M. Bérard having told his story, as I have said, in the Chamber, a discussion followed to decide whether they should receive M. de Mortemart or not General Sébastiani insisted on the affirmative; M. Mauguin declared that, if M. de Mortemart were present, he would ask that he should be heard, but that events were urgent and that they could not wait on M. de Mortemart's good pleasure.

Five commissaries were appointed, charged to go to confer with the peers: these five commissaries were Messieurs Augustin Périer[252], Sébastiani, Guizot, Benjamin Delessert[253], and Hyde de Neuville. But soon the Comte de Sussy[254] was introduced into the Elective Chamber. M. de Mortemart had charged him to present the Ordinances to the deputies. Addressing the assembly, he said:

"In the Chancellor's absence, a few peers met at my house. M. le Duc de Mortemart handed us this letter, addressed to M. le Général Gérard or M. Casimir Périer. I beg leave to communicate its contents to you."

Here is the letter:

"MONSIEUR,

"After leaving Saint-Cloud during the night, I have in vain tried to meet you. Please tell me where I can see you. I beg you to give notice of the Ordinances which I have been carrying since yesterday."

[Sidenote: The Duc de Montemart.]

M. le Duc de Mortemart had left Saint-Cloud during the night; he had had the Ordinances in his pocket for twelve or fifteen hours, "since yesterday," to use his own expression; he had been unable to find General Gérard or M. Casimir Périer: M. de Mortemart was very unlucky! M. Bérard made the following observation on the letter that had been read aloud:

"I cannot," he said, "refrain from calling attention here to a lack of frankness: M. de Mortemart, who was proceeding to M. Laffitte's this morning when I met him, formally told me that he would come here."

The five Ordinances were read. The first recalled the Ordinances of the 25th of July, the second summoned the Chambers for the 3rd of August, the third appointed M. de Mortemart Foreign Minister and President of the Council, the fourth called General Gérard to the War Office, the fifth M. Casimir Périer to the Ministry of Finance. When I at last met M. de Mortemart at the Grand Referendary's, he told me that he had been obliged to stay at M. de Sémonville's, because, having returned on foot from Saint-Cloud, he had had to go out of his way and enter the Bois de Boulogne by a gap: his boot or his shoe had taken the skin off his heel. It is to be regretted that, before producing the acts of the Throne, M. de Mortemart did not try to see the influential men and bring them round to the King's side. These acts falling suddenly in the midst of the unforewarned deputies, no one dared to declare himself. They drew down upon themselves this terrible reply from Benjamin Constant:

"We know beforehand what the Chamber of Peers will say to us: it will purely and simply accept the repeal of the Ordinances. As for myself, I do not pronounce positively on the dynastic question; I will only say that it would be too easy for a king to have his people shot down and to avoid the consequences by saying afterwards, 'Everything is as it was.'"

Would Benjamin Constant, who "did not pronounce positively on the dynastic question," have ended his phrase in the same way if words had been addressed to him earlier suited to his talents and his just ambition? I sincerely pity a man of courage and honour like M. de Mortemart, when I come to think that the Legitimate Monarchy was perhaps overthrown because the minister charged with the royal powers was unable to find two deputies in Paris and because, tired with doing three leagues on foot, he barked his heel. The Ordinance nominating M. de Mortemart to the St. Petersburg Embassy has taken the place for him of the Ordinances of his old master. Ah, how could I refuse Louis-Philippe's request that I should be his Minister of Foreign Affairs or resume my beloved embassy in Rome? But alas, what should I have done with my "beloved" on the bank of the Tiber? I should always have believed that she blushed as she looked at me.

On the morning of the 30th, I received a note from the Grand Referendary summoning me to the meeting of the Peers, at the Luxembourg. I wanted first to learn some news. I went down the Rue d'Enfer, the Place Saint-Michel and the Rue Dauphine. There was still a little excitement around the broken barricades. I compared what I saw with the great revolutionary movement of 1789, and the present struck me as orderly and silent: the change of manners was visible.

At the Pont-Neuf, the statue of Henry IV., like an ensign of the League, held a tricolour flag in its hand. Men of the people said, as they looked at the bronze King:

"You would never have been such a fool, old man."

Groups had assembled on the Quai de l'École: I saw, in the distance, a general accompanied by two aides-de-camp, all on horse-back. I went in their direction. As I elbowed my way through the crowd, my eyes were on the general: a tricolour sash across his coat, his hat cocked over the back of his head, with one comer in front. He caught sight of me in his turn, and cried:

"See! The viscount!"

[Sidenote: General Dubourg.]

And I, surprised, recognised Colonel or Captain Dubourg, my companion at Ghent, who was going, during our return to Paris, to take the open towns in the name of Louis XVIII., and who brought us, as I have related, half a sheep for dinner in a dirty lodging at Arnouville[255]. This is the officer whom the newspapers had represented as an austere soldier of the Republic, with grey mustachios, who had refused to serve under the imperial tyranny and who was so poor that they had been obliged to buy him a uniform of the days of Larevellière-Lepeaux[256] at the rag-fair. Then I exclaimed:

"Why, it's you! What..."

He stretched out his arms to me, pressed my hand on Flanquine's neck; a circle was formed around us:

"My dear fellow," said the military head of the Provisional Government, pointing out the Louvre to me, "there were twelve hundred of them in there: we gave them prunes in their hinder parts! And they ran, oh, how they ran!"

M. Dubourg's aides-de-camp burst into loud roars of laughter; the rabble laughed in unison, the general spurred his nag, which caracoled like a broken-backed beast, followed by two other Rosinantes slipping on the paving-stones as though ready to fall on their noses between their riders' legs.

Thus, proudly borne away, did the Diomedes of the Hôtel de Ville, a man, for the rest, of courage and wit, abandon me. I have seen men who, taking all the scenes of 1830 for serious, blushed at this story, because it somewhat counteracted their heroic credulity. I myself was ashamed on seeing the comical side of the gravest revolutions and how easy it is to trifle with the good faith of the people.

M. Louis Blanc, in the first volume of his excellent _Histoire de dix ans_, published after what I have just written here, confirms my story:

"A man," he says, "of middle height, with an energetic countenance, and wearing a general's uniform, was crossing the Marché des Innocents, followed by a great number of armed men. M. Évariste Dumoulin[257], editor of the _Constitutionnel_, had supplied this man with his uniform, obtained at an old-clothes shop; and the epaulets which he wore had been given him by Perlet[258], the actor: they came from the property-room of the Opéra-Comique.

"'Who is that general?" was asked on every hand.

"And when they who surrounded him answered, 'It is General Dubourg,' 'Long live General Dubourg!' cried the people, who had never heard the name before[259]."

A few paces further, a different sight awaited me: a ditch had been dug before the colonnade of the Louvre; a priest, in surplice and stole, was praying beside the ditch: they were laying dead bodies in it. I took off my hat and made the sign of the cross. The silent crowd stood respectfully watching the ceremony, which would have been nothing if religion had not appeared in it. So many memories and reflections presented themselves to my mind that I remained quite motionless. Suddenly I felt myself being crowded round; a cry arose:

"Long live the defender of the liberty of the press!"

I had been recognised by my hair. Forthwith some young men caught hold of me and said:

"Which way are you going? We are going to carry you."

I did not know what to answer; I begged to be excused; I struggled; I entreated them to let me go. The time fixed for the meeting in the House of Peers had not yet come. The young men kept on shouting:

"Which way are you going? Which way are you going?"

I replied at random:

"Well, to the Palais-Royal!"

Forthwith I was escorted there, amid cries of "The Charter for ever! The liberty of the press for ever! Chateaubriand for ever!" In the Cour des Fontaines, M. Barba[260], the bookseller, left his house and came to embrace me.

We arrived at the Palais-Royal; I was plumped down in a café under the wooden arcade. I was dying with heat. With clasped hands I reiterated my request for remission of my glory: not a bit of it; the whole of that youth refused to leave hold of me. In the crowd was a man in a waistcoat-jacket with the sleeves turned up, with black hands, a sinister face and gleaming eyes, such as I had seen so often at the commencement of the Revolution: he continually tried to approach me, and the young men always thrust him back. I learnt neither his name nor what he wanted with me.

I had to make up my mind at last to say that I was going to the House of Peers. We left the café; the cheers began afresh. In the court-yard of the Louvre, different kinds of shouts were raised: some cried, "To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" others, "Long live the First Consul!" and seemed to wish to make me the heir of Bonaparte the Republican. Hyacinthe, who accompanied me, received his share of hand-shaking and embraces. We crossed the Pont des Arts and took the Rue de Seine. The people flocked on our passage; they crowded the windows. I suffered under all these honours, for my arms were being torn from their sockets. One of the young men who were pushing me from behind suddenly slipped his head between my legs and lifted me on his shoulders. New cheers; they shouted to the spectators in the street and at the windows:

"Hats off! Hurrah for the Charter!"

And I replied:

"Yes, gentlemen, hurrah for the Charter! But hurrah for the King!"

This cry was not taken up, but it provoked no anger. And that is how the game was lost! All might still be arranged, but it was necessary to present only popular men to the people: in revolutions, a name does more than an army.

[Sidenote: I am carried to the Luxembourg.]

I besought my young friends to such good purpose that at last they put me down. In the Rue de Seine, opposite M. Le Normant, my publisher, a furniture-dealer offered an arm-chair to carry me in; I refused it and arrived in the main court of the Luxembourg in the midst of my triumph. My generous escort then left me, after shouting fresh cries of "The Charter for ever! Chateaubriand for ever!"

I was touched by the sentiments of this noble youth: I had shouted, "Long live the King!" in the midst of them all, quite as safely as though I had been alone in my house; they knew my opinions; they carried me themselves to the House of Peers, where they knew that I was going to speak and remain loyal to my King: and yet it was the 30th of July and we had just passed by the ditch where they were burying the citizens killed by the bullets of the soldiers of Charles X.!

The noise which I left outside contrasted with the silence which reigned in the entrance-hall of the Palace of the Luxembourg. This silence increased in the gloomy gallery which precedes M. de Sémonville's apartments. My presence embarrassed the twenty-five or thirty peers who had gathered there: I hindered the sweet effusions of fear, the tender consternation to which they were yielding. I there at last saw M. de Mortemart. I told him that, in accordance with the King's wishes, I was ready to act in agreement with him. He replied that, as I have already stated, he had barked his heel on returning: he disappeared again in the throng of the assembly. He apprized us of the Ordinances which he had already communicated to the Deputies through M. de Sussy. M. de Broglie declared that he had just been through Paris; that we were living on a volcano; that the middle classes were no longer able to restrain the workmen; that, if we merely pronounced the name of Charles X., they would cut all our throats and demolish the Luxembourg as they had demolished the Bastille:

"That's true, that's true!" muttered the prudent in a hollow voice, shaking their heads[261].

M. de Caraman[262], who had been made a duke, apparently because he had been M. de Metternich's lackey, maintained with great heat that it was impossible to recognise the Ordinances:

"And why not, monsieur?" I asked.

This cold question iced his rapture.

[Sidenote: Meeting of the peers.]

The five commissaries from the Deputies arrived. M. le Général Sébastiani led off with his customary phrase:

"Gentlemen, this is a serious business."

Next he sang the praises of M. le Duc de Mortemart's remarkable moderation; he spoke of the dangers of Paris, pronounced a few words in eulogy of H.R.H. Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans and concluded with the impossibility of considering the Ordinances. I and M. Hyde de Neuville were the only two who held the opposite opinion. I obtained leave to speak:

"M. le Duc de Broglie has told us, gentlemen, that he has walked about the streets and seen hostile dispositions on every hand. I, too, have just been through Paris: three thousand young men escorted me to the court-yard of this palace; you may have heard their cheers: are these thirsting for your blood, who have thus greeted one of your colleagues? They shouted:

"The Charter for ever!'

"I replied:

"'The King for ever!'

"They showed no anger, and came and brought me safe and sound into your midst. Are those such threatening symptoms of public opinion? Personally, I maintain that nothing is lost, that we can accept the Ordinances. It is not a question of considering whether there be danger or not, but of keeping the oaths which we have taken to the King, to whom we owe our dignities, and many of us our fortune. His Majesty, by withdrawing the Ordinances and changing his ministry, has done all that he should; let us, in our turn, do our duty. What! In the whole course of our lives there comes one single day in which we are obliged to enter the lists, and shall we decline the combat? Let us give France the example of honour and loyalty; let us save her from falling a prey to anarchical combinations in which her peace, her true interests and her liberties would be lost: danger vanishes when one dares to look it in the face."

They made no reply; they hastened to close the meeting. There was an impatience for perjury in that assembly, which was driven by an intrepid fear; each one wished to save his rag of life, as though Time were not waiting, on the morrow, to strip us of our old skins, for which no sensible Jew would have given a groat.

[Footnote 162: This book was written in Paris in August and September 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 163: Lamartine was elected a member of the French Academy on the 5th of November 1829, receiving nineteen votes against fourteen given to General Philippe de Ségur.--B.]

[Footnote 164: Charles Jean Dominique de Lacretelle (1766-1855), member of the French Academy, and author of the _Histoire de France pendant le XVIIIe. siècle._--T.]

[Footnote 165: Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat (1788-1832), the distinguished orientalist. He devoted the last years of his life to politics, speaking and writing as an ardent adherent of the Legitimacy.--T.]

[Footnote 166: Antoine Jean Saint-Martin (1791-1832), also an eminent orientalist and fervent Monarchist. He founded, in 1829, the absolutist organ, the _Universel._--T.]

[Footnote 167: January 1829.--B.]

[Footnote 168: Achille Charles Léonce Victor Duc de Broglie (1785-1870), married in 1816 to Albertine, daughter of Madame de Staël. He became a leading Orleanist statesman, was Minister of the Interior and of Public Worship and Instruction (1830) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1832-1834 and 1834-1836), a peer of France, and a member of the French Academy.--T.]

[Footnote 169: Louis Auguste Victor de Ghaisne, Comte de Bourmont (1773-1846), had commanded the Chouans in the Vendée from 1794 to 1799, and, in 1800, was imprisoned for complicity in the conspiracy resulting in the Infernal Machine. He made his escape from Besançon and fled to Lisbon, where he joined the French during their reverses and was taken into favour by Napoleon in 1808. He served under Bonaparte in all his subsequent campaigns. After the return from Elba he accepted a command from the Emperor, but reverted to the King a few days before the Battle of Waterloo. He was created a peer of France in 1823 and became Minister for War in 1829. In 1830, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Algerian Expedition. After the Revolution of July, true to his latent royalist sympathies, he fought for the Duchesse de Berry in the Vendée and subsequently for Dom Miguel in Portugal, but always without success. Eventually he abandoned politics and returned to France, where he died at the Château de Bourmont in 1846.--T.]

[Footnote 170: Jean Joseph Antoine de Courvoisier (1775-1835). He had emigrated and served in Condé's Army, and since 1818 was Attorney-General to the Lyons Courts.--B.]

[Footnote 171: Guillaume Isidore Baron, Comte de Montbel (1787-1861), escaped after the Revolution of July and fled to Austria. He was sentenced by contumacy to perpetual imprisonment, and was not amnestied until 1836, when he returned to France, keeping out of politics. Montbel died at Frohsdorff while on a visit to the Comte de Chambord, 3 February 1861.--B.]

[Footnote 172: When M. de Polignac became President of the Council, on the 17th of November 1829, M. de La Bourdonnaye sent in his resignation as Minister of the Interior. One of his friends asked him the reason of his resignation:

"They wanted to make me stake my head," was his reply. "I wanted to hold the cards." (Villèle's Political Papers).--B.]

[Footnote 173: Martial Côme Annibal Perpétue Magloire Comte de Guernon-Ranville (1787-1866), a distinguished lawyer. After the Revolution of July, he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment and confined at Ham, where he remained until the amnesty of 1836. He then withdrew to the Château de Ranville, in Calvados, where he died in November 1866.--B.]

[Footnote 174: The _National_, the first number of which was published on the 3rd of January 1830. It was founded by Messieurs Thiers, Mignet and Armand Carrel, each of whom was to have the management of the paper for one year, commencing with M. Thiers.--B.]

[Footnote 175: Sautelet (_d._ 1830), the publisher, did in fact commit suicide a few months after the founding of the _National._--B.]

[Footnote 176: Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) occupied Cabinet positions from 1832 to 1836, and was Prime Minister from May to October 1840. His _Histoire du consulat et de l'empire_ was published from 1845 to 1862. He was a conspicuous member of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies from 1848 to 1851, and was arrested by Louis Napoleon at the time of the _coup d'État._ In 1863, he was elected to the Legislative Body, and led the opposition against the Imperial Government. On the 31st of August 1871, he was declared President of the French Republic for a term of three years, but resigned on the 24th of May 1873. Thiers had been a member of the French Academy since 1834.--T.]

[Footnote 177: Franços Auguste Marie Mignet (1796-1884), author of the _Histoire de la révolution française de_ 1789 _à_ 1814 (1824) and a number of other notable historical works. He was received into the French Academy in 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 178: Nicolas Armand Carrel (1800-1836), an historian and journalist, killed in a political duel on the 22nd of July 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 179: On the 5th of May 1830, the Duc d'Angoulême held a review at Toulon of the fleet which was about to set sail for Algiers. It consisted of 675 men-of-war and merchant-ships, including no less than 11 battle-ships, 24 frigates and 70 war-ships of lesser strength. This day represented Fortune's last smile upon the House of Bourbon, which found France exhausted, impoverished, crushed beneath the weight of unutterable disasters and was about to leave her free, prosperous and powerful, with admirable finances and a superb fleet; which found her vanquished, humiliated, trodden under foot by four hundred thousand invaders and was about to bequeath to her the surest and fairest of all conquests, accomplished under the eyes and despite the threats of trembling England.--B.]

[Footnote 180: Charles V. lost a fleet and an army at Algiers in 1545.--T.]

[Footnote 181: Bossuet's funeral oration on the Empress Maria Theresa.--T.]

[Footnote 182: Charles Lenormant (1802-1859), the French archæologist and numismatist.--T.]

[Footnote 183: Jean Jacques Champollion Figeac (1778-1867), the noted archæologist.--T.]

[Footnote 184: Auguste Théodore Hilaire Baron Barchou de Penhoen (1801-1855), was a staff-captain in the Algerian Expedition, resigned his commission in order not to serve the government of Louis-Philippe, and devoted himself to literature and philosophy.--B.]

[Footnote 185: BARON BARCHOU DE PENHOEN: _Mémoires d'un officier d'état-major_, p. 427.--_Authors Note._]

[Footnote 186: In his Speech from the Throne, Charles X. announced the Algerian Expedition, declaring that the insult shown to the French flag by a barbarous Power would not long remain unpunished, and that a brilliant reparation was about to satisfy the honour of France. The same evening, some friends, among whom was M. Villemain, had gathered in Chateaubriand's drawing-room:

"This," said Chateaubriand, "is one of the things that belong to the old French tradition, to the inheritance of St. Louis and Louis XIV.; this is what the Legitimate Royalty does. In the present crisis, with its wretched instruments, despite its fears, exaggerated, I grant you, it conceives a generous and Christian enterprise, one which I advised in 1816, one which it would have undertaken with me, if it had had the sense to keep me. Yes, this same Algiers which Bossuet shows us destroyed by our bomb-ketches, and which saved its harbour only by handing over its Christian slaves to us, may fall into our hands this summer. We shall do better than Lord Exmouth. Nothing will surprise me of French valour. Only, this delights me without reassuring me. Who knows the unfathomable depths of Providence? It is able with the same blow to lay low the conquered and the conqueror, to enlarge a kingdom and overthrow a dynasty."

(VILLEMAIN: _M. de Chateaubriand, sa vie, ses écrits, son influence littéraire et politique sur son temps_).--B.]

[Footnote 187: Charles Guillaume Étienne (1778-1845), a dramatist and publicist, appointed Censor in 1810, and a member of the French Academy in 1811. The Bourbons excluded him from his public employment and even from his seat in the Academy, to which he was not re-admitted until 1820, in which year he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In 1830 he was one of the signatories to the Address of the 221. Some years later (1839), Louis-Philippe raised him to the peerage.--T.]

[Footnote 188: The Comte de Lorgeril (1778-1843) was elected in 1828 to the seat vacated by M. de Corbière, who had been raised to the peerage. Lorgeril lost his seat in 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 189: The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved on the 16th of May. The departments which had only one electoral college were summoned to vote on the 23rd of June; in the other departments, the district colleges were to meet on the 3rd of July and the departmental colleges on the 20th of July. The opening of the new Chamber was fixed for the 3rd of August.--B.]

[Footnote 190: The _Tribune des départements_, founded by Auguste and Victornin Fabre. After 1830, this sheet became the most violent organ of the Republican Opposition.--B.]

[Footnote 191: Hilaire Étienne Octave Rouillé, Comte, later (on the death of his father in 1840) Marquis de Boissy (1798-1866). He was created a peer of France in 1839, and for ten years was the _enfant terrible_ of the Upper Chamber, harassing the Chancelier Pasquier with his continual interruptions and irreverent sallies. In 1853, he was made a senator, having meantime, in 1851, married the Contessa Guiccioli, who was then herself nearly fifty and had been Byron's "widow" for more than a quarter of a century.--B.]

[Footnote 192: For the full text of the Royal Ordinances of July, see the Appendix at the end of this volume, p. 421.--T.]

[Footnote 193: The Report to the King had been drawn up by M. de Chantelauze.--B.]

[Footnote 194: Article XIV. of the Charter ran thus:

"The King is the Supreme Head of the State, commands the forces on sea and land, declares war, makes treaties of peace, alliance and commerce, appoints to all the offices of the public administration, and makes the rules and _ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the State._"--B.]

[Footnote 195: Chateaubriand was then living at 84, Rue d'Enfer.--B.]

[Footnote 196: Étienne Maurice Maréchal Comte Gérard (1773-1853) had distinguished himself as a general in the Napoleonic campaigns. He was Minister for War for a few months in 1830, and again in 1834. He was made a marshal of France in 1830 and, in 1831 and 1832, directed the Siege of Antwerp, valorously defended by General Chassé. Gérard became Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour in 1836. He lost all his offices in 1848; but, in 1853, a few months before his death, was appointed a Senator by Napoleon III.--T.]

[Footnote 197: Claude Antoine Gabriel Duc de Choiseul-Stainville (1760-1838), created a peer of France in 1814 and Governor of the Louvre in 1820. Later, he became an aide-de-camp to Louis-Philippe.--B.]

[Footnote 198: Jean Henri Claude Mangin (1786-1835), a noted lawyer and writer on jurisprudence, had been Prefect of Police since 1829.--T.]

[Footnote 199: The Comte de Chabrol-Volvic, brother of the Comte de Chabrol-Croussol, who had been Minister of Finance in the Polignac Cabinet until May 1830.--B.]

[Footnote 200: The Vicomte de Champagny.--B.]

[Footnote 201: Felix Barthe (1795-1863), in December 1830, succeeded Mérilhou as Minister of Public Instruction in the Laffitte Cabinet. In 1831, he became Minister of Justice under Casimir Périer and continued to hold the Seals until the fall of the Broglie Administration in 1834. He was then created a peer of France and President of the _Cour des Comptes._ Under the Second Empire, Barthe became a senator.--B.]

[Footnote 202: Joseph Mérilhou (1788-1856), Minister of Public Instruction and Public Worship in 1830, and a peer of France in 1837.--B.]

[Footnote 203: The protest was drawn up by Thiers, Châtelain, and Cauchois-Lemaire. Here are the names of the forty-four signatories: Gauja, manager of the _National_; Thiers, Mignet, Chambolle, Peysse, Albert Stapfer, Dubochet, Rolle, editors of the _National_; Châtelain, Guyet, Moussette, Avenel, Alexis de Jussieu, J. F. Dupont, editors, and V. de Lapelouse, manager of the _Courrier français_; Guizard, Dejean, Charles de Rémusat, editors, and Pierre Leroux, manager of the _Globe_; Anneé, Cauchois-Lemaire and Évariste Dumoulin, editors of the _Constitutionnel_; Senty, Haussmann, Dussard, Chalas, A. Billard, J. J. Baude, Busoni, Barboux, editors, and Coste, manager of the _Temps_; Victor Bohain, Nestor Roqueplan, editors of the _Figaro_; Auguste Fabre and Ader, editors of the _Tribune des départements_; Plagnol, Levasseur and Fazy, editors of the _Révolution_; F. Larreguy, editor, and Bert, manager of the _Journal du commerce_; Léon Pillet, manager of the _Journal de Paris_; Vaillant, manager of the _Sylphe_; Sarrans the Younger, manager of the _Courrier des électeurs._--B.]

[Footnote 204: There were fourteen of them: Messieurs Bavoux, Bérard, Bernard, de Laborde, Chardel, Daunou, Jacques Lefebvre, Marchai, Mauguin, Casimir Périer, Persil, de Schonen, Vassal and Villemain.--B.]

[Footnote 205: Madame de Courchamp was a sister of the Becquets.--B.]

[Footnote 206: Étienne Becquet (1800-1838), one of the editors of the _Débats_, is the only one of the two brothers who has left a name.--B.]

[Footnote 207: Jacques Coste (1798-1859), after selling his paper, the _Tablettes historiques_, remained the declared adversary of the government of the Restoration. He founded the _Temps_ in 1829; it lasted till 1842. The title was again taken by M. Xavier Durrieu in 1849, but this paper lasted only ten months, and lastly, in 1861, by M. A. Nefftzer, who founded the _Temps_ which we know to-day.--B.]

[Footnote 208: The full title of this paper was _Tablettes historiques, ou Répertoire de documents historiques, politiques, scientifiques et littéraires, avec une Bibliographie raisonnée._ In 1824, after he had been fined and sentenced to a year's imprisonment, M. Coste sold the _Tablettes_ to M. Sosthène de La Rochefoucauld, who was at that time pursuing his policy of buying up the Opposition papers with the funds of the Civil List and sometimes with his own money. One of Coste's collaborators, M. Rabbe, wrote a strong letter to M. Coste, which was inserted in the _Courrier français_, and led to a duel between the two writers.--B.]

[Footnote 209: Jean Jacques Baron Baude (_cf._ Vol. IV, p. 7, n. 2). Baude was Prefect of Police from December 1830 to February 1831.--B.]

[Footnote 210: "Another commissary of police went to the _Temps_, where he was encountered by M. Baude, attached to the journal. He summoned the commissary to desist, declaring that he was committing an illegal act; that the laws protected the journals and their presses, and that no ordonnance could avail in contradiction to them. The commissary of police, however staggered by the obstinacy of Baude, sent for a locksmith to break open the door of the printing-office, and then break the press. Apostrophized by Baude, and warned that they were committing an illegal act, the smith refused to obey, till the special smith of the police and the gaols arrived. Seven hours were spent in altercation before the order of the commissary could be accomplished by a forcible entrance, and rendering the presses incapable of being worked any more." (EYRE CROWE: _History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X._).--T.]

[Footnote 211: M. Billot.--B.]

[Footnote 212: Casimir Périer lived at 27, Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg.--B.]

[Footnote 213: Pierre François Audry de Puyravault (1783-1852), an important manufacturer of strong liberal opinions. He continued to figure in the Opposition during the Orleanist reign.--T.]

[Footnote 214: Auguste Jean Marie Baron de Schonen (1782-1849). He held high legal office under the Empire, the Restoration and the Usurpation.--T.]

[Footnote 215: M. Cadet de Gassicourt the Younger (1789-1861) became mayor of the 4th arrondissement, or ward, of Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 216: Changed soon after into Rue du 29 Juillet.--B.]

[Footnote 217: Alfred Nettement, in his _Histoire de la Restauration_, gives a somewhat different version of this incident:

"It was then six o'clock in the evening. The Royal Guard came to lend a necessary aid to the Gendarmerie and the Line, whose efforts remained powerless. Musket-shots replied to the hail of stones that fell upon the troop; they were fired by a detachment of the 5th Regiment of the Line which entered the Rue Saint-Honoré from the Rue de Rivoli. This discharge cost the life of a young English student called Folks, who had taken refuge in the Hôtel Royal, at the corner of the Rue des Pyramides. He had had the imprudence to go to the window to watch the progress of the insurrectionary movement, and was struck by one of the first bullets."--B.]

[Footnote 218: The President of the Council occupied the building of the Foreign Office, then situated at the comer of the Rue des Capucines and the boulevards.--B.]

[Footnote 219: Alfred Armand Robert Comte de Saint-Chamans (1781-1848).--B.]

[Footnote 220: Alexandre Sala, an officer in the 6th Infantry of the Guard. He was with the Duchesse de Berry on the _Carlo-Alberto_ in 1832, was tried at Montbrison, and acquitted. In 1848, with Alfred Nettement and Armand de Pontmartin, he founded the _Opinion publique_, of which he was one of the chief editors until its suppression in January 1852.--B.]

[Footnote 221: Joseph Marie Fieschi (1790-1836), a native of Corsica, set up an infernal machine in a house on the Boulevard du Temple, and discharged it as Louis-Philippe, accompanied by his staff, was passing before the windows on the 28th of July 1835. Eighteen persons were killed, including Marshal Mortier, Duc de Trévise, and 22 severely wounded. Louis-Philippe escaped. Fieschi and his two accomplices, Pépin and Morey, were executed on the 16th of February 1836.--T.]

[Footnote 222: This column was under the orders of General Talon, and consisted of a battalion of the 3rd Regiment of the Guard, reinforced by 150 Lancers, a Swiss battalion and two guns.--B.]

[Footnote 223: Jean Dominique Barron Larrey (1766-1842) was Napoleon's famous surgeon in the Grand Army. But the surgeon who treated Colonel de Pleine-Selve was his son, with whom Chateaubriand confuses him, Félix Hyppolite Baron Larrey (_b._ 1808), who in 1830 was assistant-surgeon at the hospital of the Royal Guards known as the Hôpital du Gros-Caillou. He was appointed surgeon to Napoleon III. in 1853, and was Chief Surgeon to the Army of Italy in 1859 and to the Army of the Rhine in 1870. Félix Baron Larrey sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1877 to 1881.--B.]

[Footnote 224: Jacques Laffitte (1767-1844), the banker. He was a prominent member of the Opposition throughout the Restoration and the Orleanist Usurpation. He was a capable financier and a generous and charitable individual.--T.]

[Footnote 225: André Louis Augustin Marchais (1800-1857), a tried and persistent conspirator. Under the Second Empire, in 1853, he was arrested as a member of the secret society known as the Marianne, and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He was released long before the expiration of this term, and left France for good. He died in Constantinople.--B.]

[Footnote 226: Eusèbe Salverte (1771-1839), an ardent "patriot," and author of some poems and a number of literary and political works.--T.]

[Footnote 227: At 40, Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière.--B.]

[Footnote 228: Dominique François Jean Arago (1786-1853), the famous astronomer and Director of the Observatory. He was a deputy from 1831 to 1848, a member of the Provisional Government in 1848, and a member of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies from 1848 to 1849.--B.]

[Footnote 229: General Jacques Jean Marie François Boudin, Comte de Tromelin (1771-1842), served in the Army of the Princes in 1792 and took part in the Quiberon Expedition. Attached afterwards to the Royal Army in Normandy, he was captured at Caen (1798), escaped, and went to the East, where he took part, in the Turkish Army, in the Syrian and Egyptian campaigns. He returned to France in 1802, was locked up in the Abbaye at the time of the Pichegru and Cadoudal Affair, and came out, at the end of six months, to enter the 112th Regiment of the Line as a captain. He was made a brigadier-general after Leipzig and fought valiantly at Waterloo. He obtained great successes in Spain, in 1823, and was made a lieutenant-general. Tromelin played a courageous and honourable part during the Days of July.--B.]

[Footnote 230: General Louis Alexandre Marie Valon de Boucheron, Comte d'Ambrugeac (1771-1844), had been a colonel under the Empire, and served, during the Hundred Days, in the Duc d'Angoulême's little army. He was made a peer of France by Louis XVIII. in 1823, took the oath to Louis Philippe in 1830, and remained a peer of France.--B.]

[Footnote 231: Jean Baptiste Adolphe Charras (1800-1865) had been expelled from the Polytechnic School, three months before the Days of July, for drinking the health of La Fayette and singing the _Marseillaise_ at a students' banquet. In 1848, he became Under-secretary for War. He was arrested at the _coup d'État_ in 1851 and taken to Brussels. He died at Basle in January 1865.--B.]

[Footnote 232: Isidore Maréchal Comte Exelmans (1775-1852), one of the most brilliant cavalry generals of the First Empire, became a peer of France under Louis-Philippe, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honour in 1849, and a marshal under Napoleon III.--B.]

[Footnote 233: General Pierre Claude Comte Pajol (1772-1844) was married to Élise Oudinot, the Maréchal Duc de Reggio's eldest daughter. He too was a fine cavalry leader and had distinguished himself in all the Napoleonic campaigns. Napoleon created him a baron in 1809, Louis XVIII. a count in 1814, and, on the return from Elba, he took his troops over to Napoleon and was created a peer of France on the 2nd of June 1815, a dignity which he enjoyed for a fortnight. He left the service and France, returning to Paris on the 29th of July 1830, after an absence of fourteen years, to take over the command of the insurrection. In 1831, he was once more created a peer of France, by Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 234: Albert Anne Jules Bertier de Sauvigny, a lieutenant in the 34th Foot. Two years later he was tried and acquitted for persistently attempting to run down King Louis-Philippe in the street while driving his gig.--B.]

[Footnote 235: Jean George Farcy (1800-1830), an old pupil of the Polytechnic School. He had translated the recently-published third volume of Dugald Stewart's _Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind._ He was one of the first insurgents killed near the Louvre.--B.]

[Footnote 236: Jacques Leonard Clement Thomas (1809-1871) remained an insurgent all his life. In May 1848, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, but was dismissed, a few weeks later, for insulting the Legion of Honour in the Chamber. At the time of the _coup d'État_, in 1851, he made vain efforts to bring about a rising in the Gironde, for which he had been elected deputy in 1848, and was exiled in consequence. He refused to accept the amnesty in 1859, and did not return till after the 4th of September 1870. During the siege, he was given the command of the National Guards of the Seine; he sent in his resignation to General Trochu on the 14th of February 1871, and retired into private life. On the 18th of March, at the beginning of the insurrection, he was recognised and arrested by some National Guards on the Place Pigalle, taken to the central committee-rooms at Montmartre, and promptly shot.--B.]

[Footnote 237: Jules Bastide (1800-1870) was the first to plant the tricolour flag on the Tuileries. After the Revolution of February, he was Foreign Minister from 28 February to 20 December 1848.--B.]

[Footnote 238: Joseph Augustin Guinard (1799-1874) plotted equally against the Restoration and the Government of July. In 1849, he plotted against the Second Republic, was arrested and sentenced to transportation for life. He was liberated in 1854 and lived thenceforth in retirement--B.]

[Footnote 239: Casimir Louis Victurnien de Rochechouart, Prince de Tonnay-Charente, Duc de Mortemart (1787-1875). He served under the Empire, became a peer of France under the First Restoration, and Colonel of the Hundred Swiss. During the Hundred Days, he followed the King to Ghent and, after the return, was appointed Major-General of the National Guard of Paris. The Duc de Mortemart was Ambassador to St. Petersburg from 1828 to 1830. He continued to sit in the House of Peers after the Revolution of July and, under the Second Empire, in 1852, accepted a seat in the Senate, while holding aloof from the new Court.--B.]

[Footnote 240: Apollinaire Antoine Maurice Comte d'Argout (1782-1858) was created a peer of France in 1819, and, like M. de Sémonville, belonged to the Moderate Right. He was several times a minister from 1830 to 1836, holding successively the portfolios of the Navy, Commerce and Public Works, the Interior and Finance. During these six years, his very long nose was the constant butt of the draughtsmen on the Caricature and Charivari, and eventually they drove him to take refuge in the less prominent post of Governor of the Bank of France. The Comte d'Argout died a senator of the Second Empire.--B.]

[Footnote 241: The Duc de Choiseul-Stainville was shipwrecked at Calais in November 1795, arrested by the authorities, acquitted by the Court Martial before which he was brought, and nevertheless kept in prison by the Directorate and finally condemned to death. The 18 Brumaire saved him.--B.]

[Footnote 242: In the Rue d'Artois, soon to be renamed Rue Laffitte.--B.]

[Footnote 243: Georges Mouton, Maréchal Comte de Lobau (1770-1838), had distinguished himself in the wars of Napoleon, who gave him his title. He was taken prisoner after the Capitulation of Dresden, in 1813, and taken to England, where he remained till 1814. He fought at Waterloo, was exiled under the Restoration and returned to France in 1818. In 1828, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Lobau succeeded La Fayette as Commandant of the National Guard in December 1830, and was created a marshal in 1831.--T.]

[Footnote 244: François Mauguin (1785-1854), a famous advocate. He became a member of the Municipal Commission, sat in the Dynastic Left during the Usurpation and played a lesser part in public life in 1848 and the subsequent events.--T.]

[Footnote 245: Richard Cromwell (1626-1712), son of Oliver Cromwell, succeeded his father as Lord Protector of England in September 1658 and resigned in May 1659.--T.]

[Footnote 246: Casimir Marie Marcellin Pierre Célestin Chardel (1777-1847) was a judge of the Seine Tribunal, in 1830, and a deputy for Paris.--B.]

[Footnote 247: Pierre François Marchal (1785-1864) sat in opposition throughout the duration of the Orleans Government.--B.]

[Footnote 248: Jacques François Nicolas Bavoux (1774-1848), a deputy for Paris. He kept the Prefecture of Police for two days only and was supplanted by M. Girod de l'Ain on the 1st of August.--B.]

[Footnote 249: Auguste Simon Louis Bérard (1783-1859), the Paris banker.--B.]

[Footnote 250: Palamède de Forbin-Janson, brother-in-law to the Duc de Mortemart.--B.]

[Footnote 251: François Sauvo (1772-1859), manager of the _Moniteur universel_ from 1800 to 1840.--B.]

[Footnote 252: Augustin Charles Périer (1773-1833), brother of Casimir Périer, had been a deputy since 1827. He was not re-elected in 1831, and was created a peer of France in 1832.--B.]

[Footnote 253: Jules Paul Benjamin Baron Delessert (1773-1847), a great manufacturer, was the first to make beetroot-sugar in France and to introduce the idea of the savings-bank from England. Napoleon made him a baron of the Empire. Delessert was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1817 to 1824 and from 1827 to 1842, sitting with the Constitutional Opposition during the Restoration and with the Conservatives after 1830.--T.]

[Footnote 254: Jean Baptiste Henry Collin, Comte de Sussy (1776-1837), had been a member of the House of Peers since 1827. He retained his seat till his death, having sworn allegiance to the Government of July.--B.]

[Footnote 255: _Cf._ Vol. III, p. 181.--T.]

[Footnote 256: Louis Marie La Revellière-Lepeaux (1753-1824), a barrister-scientist, member of the Constituent Assembly and of the Convention, and author of the _Propagande armée._ He resisted the Terrorists in 1793, was, a very short while, a member of the Directorate, but retired from politics for good and all in 1795.--T.]

[Footnote 257: Évariste Dumoulin (1776-1833), a well-known French publicist, and one of the founders of the _Constitutionnel_ in 1815.--T.]

[Footnote 258: Adrien Perlet (1795-1850), an excellent comic actor. Most of his successes were made at the Gymnase; he was not a member of the Opéra-Comique.--T.]

[Footnote 259: On the 9th of January of this present year 1841, I received a letter from M. Dubourg containing these "phrases:"

"How I have longed to see you since our meeting on the Quai du Louvre! How often have I longed to pour out into your bosom the sorrows that racked my soul! What an unhappy thing it is passionately to love one's country, one's honour, one's glory, when one lives at such a time!....

"Was I wrong, in 1830, to refuse to submit to what was being done? I saw clearly the odious future which was being prepared for France, I explained how nothing but evil could spring from such fraudulent political arrangements; but no one understood me."

On the 5th of July of this same year 1841, M. Dubourg wrote to me again to send me the rough draft of a note which he addressed, in 1828, to Messieurs de Martignac and de Caux to engage them to admit me to the Council. I have therefore put forward nothing concerning M. Dubourg which is not most scrupulously true.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1841).]

[Footnote 260: Gustave Barba (_b. circa_ 1805), the publisher-bookseller.--T.]

[Footnote 261: It is right that I should set the Duc du Broglie's version against that of Chateaubriand:

"I really do not know," says the duke (_Souvenirs_, vol. III.), "if I spoke four words in a desultory conversation, in which we were animated by the same sentiments and preoccupied with the same object: but I am perfectly certain of this, that I never said that I had just been through Paris; that we were living on a volcano; that the employers were no longer able to restrain their workmen; that, if the King's name were thenceforth pronounced, they would cut the throat of whoever pronounced it; that we should all be massacred; that they would take the Luxembourg by assault as they had taken the Bastille in 1789. And as for the speech with which M. de Chateaubriand confounded that language, it is perhaps my fault, but I regret to say that I did not hear one word of it."--B.]

[Footnote 262: Victor Louis Charles de Riquet de Caraman, Duc de Caraman (1762-1839), of the Netherlands family of Riquet de Caraman, was created a French baron in 1813, a marquis and peer of France in 1815, a count and peer of France in 1827, Duc de Caraman, _ad personam_, in 1828, and an hereditary French duke in June 1830.--T.]