BOOK XV[263]

The Republicans--The Orleanist--M. Thiers is sent to

Neuilly--Convocation of peers at the Grand Refendary's--The letter

reaches me too late--Saint-Cloud--Scene between M. le Dauphin

and the Maréchal de Raguse--Neuilly--M. le Duc d'Orléans--The

Raincy--The Prince comes to Paris--A deputation from the Elective

Chamber offers M. le Duc d'Orléans the Lieutenant-generalship

of the Kingdom--He accepts--Efforts of the Republicans--M. le

Duc d'Orléans goes to the Hôtel de Ville--The Republicans at the

Palais-Royal--The King leaves Saint-Cloud--Madame la Dauphine arrives

at Trianon--The Diplomatic Body--Rambouillet--3 August: opening of

the Session--Letter from Charles X. to M. le Duc d'Orléans--The

mob sets out for Rambouillet--Flight of the King--Reflections--The

Palais-Royal--Conversations--Last political temptation--M. de

Sainte-Aulaire--Last gasp of the Republican Party--The day's work of

the 7th of August--Sitting of the House of Peers--My speech--I leave

the Palace of the Luxembourg, never to return--My resignations--Charles

X. takes ship at Cherbourg-What the Revolution of July will be--Close

of my political career.

The three parties were beginning to take shape and to act against one

another: the deputies who were in favour of a monarchy as represented

by the Elder Branch were the strongest, legally: they rallied to

themselves all that tended towards order; but, morally, they were

the weakest: they hesitated; they did not speak out: it was becoming

manifest, from the tergiversation of the Court, that they would fall

into the Usurpation rather than see themselves swallowed up by the

Republic.

The latter had a placard posted on the walls saying:

"France is free. She grants the Provisional Government the right

only of consulting her, until the time when she shall have

expressed her will by new elections. No more Royalty. The executive

power entrusted to a temporary President. Mediate or immediate

co-operation of all the citizens in the election of Deputies.

Liberty of worship."

This placard summed up the only just things in the republican opinion;

a new assembly of deputies would have decided if it was well or ill to

give way to that wish of "no more Royalty;" each would have pleaded his

cause, and the election of a government of whatever kind by a national

congress would have borne the character of legality.

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

large letters:

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

prosperity, liberty."

Lastly appeared an address to Messieurs the members of the Municipal

Commission forming a provisional government; it demanded:

"That no proclamation be issued naming a ruler, so long as the

form itself of the government can not yet be decided; that the

Provisional Government remain in power until the wish of the

majority of Frenchmen be known, any other measure being ill-timed

and culpable."

This address, emanating from the members of a commission appointed by

a large number of citizens of different wards in Paris, was signed

by Messieurs Chevalier[264], as chairman, Trélat[265], Teste[266],

Lepelletier, Guinard[267], Hingray[268], Cauchois-Lemaire[269], etc.

In this popular assembly, they proposed to offer the Presidency of

the Republic by acclamation to M. de La Fayette; they relied upon

the principles which the Chamber of Representatives of 1815 had

proclaimed, when separating. Various printers refused to publish these

proclamations, saying that they had been forbidden to do so by M. le

Duc de Broglie. The Republic was casting the throne of Charles X. to

the ground, and it feared the prohibitions of M. de Broglie, who had no

character of any kind.

[Sidenote: The Orleanist party.]

I have told you how, during the night between the 29th and 30th of

July, M. Laffitte, with M. Thiers and M. Mignet, had made every

preparation to draw the eyes of the public on M. le Duc d'Orléans. On

the 30th appeared proclamations and addresses, the fruit of this cabal,

with "Let us avoid the Republic" for their burden. Next came the feats

of arms of Jemmapes[270] and Valmy[271], and the people was assured

that M. le Duc d'Orléans was not a Capet, but a Valois[272].

And meanwhile M. Thiers, sent by M. Laffitte, was ambling towards

Neuilly with M. Scheffer[273]: H.R.H. was not there. Great wordy

contests between Mademoiselle d'Orléans[274] and M. Thiers: it was

agreed that they should write to M. le Duc d'Orléans to persuade him

to rally to the Revolution. M. Thiers himself wrote a note to the

Prince, and Madame Adélaïde promised to precede her family to Paris.

Orleanism had made progress and, on the evening, of that same day, the

question had been raised among the Deputies of conferring the powers of

Lieutenant-general on M. le Duc d'Orléans.

M. de Sussy, with the Saint-Cloud Ordinances, had met with an even more

indifferent reception at the Hôtel de Ville than in the Chamber of

Deputies. Armed with a "receipt" from M. de La Fayette, he returned to

M. de Mortemart, who exclaimed:

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

The Municipal Commission issued a proclamation in which it declared

that "the crimes of his [Charles X.'s] power were ended," and that "the

people would have a government which should owe its origin to them [the

people]:" an ambiguous phrase which you were free to interpret as you

pleased. Messieurs Laffitte and Périer did not sign this document M.

de La Fayette, alarmed, a little late in the day, at the idea of the

Orleanist Royalty, sent M. Odilon Barrot to the Chamber of Deputies to

announce that the people, the authors of the Revolution of July, did

not mean to end it by a simple change of persons, and that the blood

that had been shed was well worth a few liberties. There was talk of

a proclamation of the Deputies to invite H.R.H. the Duc d'Orléans to

come to the Capital: after some communications with the Hôtel de Ville,

this plan of a proclamation was demolished. Nevertheless it led to the

formation of a sort of deputation of twelve members who were to go to

the Lord of Neuilly[275] to offer him that Lieutenant-generalship for

which they had not been able to make way in a proclamation.

In the evening, the Grand Refendary assembled the Peers in his

apartments[276]: his letter, through negligence or policy, reached me

too late. I hurried to hasten to the meeting; they opened the gate of

the Allée de l'Observatoire for me; I crossed the Luxembourg garden:

when I reached the palace, I found no one there. I made my way back

past the flower-beds, my eyes fixed on the moon. I regretted the seas

and the mountains above which she had appeared to me, the forests in

whose tops, herself vanishing in silence, she had seemed to repeat to

me the maxim of Epicurus[277]:

"Conceal thy life."

[Sidenote: Troops retire to Saint-Cloud.]

I have left the troops falling back upon Saint-Cloud, on the evening

of the 29th. The citizens of Chaillot and Passy attacked them, killing

a captain of Carabineers and two officers, and wounding some ten

soldiers. Captain Le Motha[278] of the Guards was struck by a bullet

fired by a child whom he had been pleased to spare. This captain had

given in his resignation at the time of the Ordinances; but, seeing

that they were fighting on the 27th, he returned to his regiment to

share the dangers of his comrades. Never, to the glory of France, was

there a finer battle waged in the parties opposed between liberty and

honour.

Children, always fearless because they know nothing of danger, played

a sad part in the work of the Three Days: sheltered behind their

weakness, they fired point-blank at officers who would have thought

themselves dishonoured in beating them back. Modern arms place

death at the disposal of the feeblest hand. Ugly, wizened little

monkeys, libertines before they have the power of being so, cruel and

perverse, these little heroes of the three days gave themselves up to

assassination with all the abandonment of innocence. Let us beware

lest, by imprudent praises, we give birth to the emulation of evil: the

children of Sparta used to go helot-hunting.

Monsieur le Dauphin received the soldiers at the gate of the village of

Boulogne, in the wood, and then returned to Saint-Cloud.

Saint-Cloud was guarded by the four companies of the Body-guards.

The battalion of the pupils of Saint-Cyr had arrived: in rivalry and

in contrast with the Polytechnic School, they had embraced the royal

cause. The attenuated troops, returning from a three days' battle,

by their wounds and dilapidated appearance caused only amazement

to the titled, gilded and well-fed flunkeys who dined at the royal

table. No one thought of cutting the telegraphic lines; couriers,

travellers, mail-coaches, diligences passed freely along the road, with

the tricolour flag, which urged the villages to revolt as it passed

through them. Seduction by means of money and women was commencing.

The proclamations of the Commune of Paris were hawked to and fro. The

King and Court still refused to be persuaded that they were in danger.

In order to prove that they despised the doings of a few mutinous

burgesses and that there was no revolution, they let everything go:

God's finger is seen in all this.

At nightfall, on the 30th of July, at nearly the same hour when the

commission of the Deputies left for Neuilly, an adjutant announced to

the troops that the Ordinances were repealed. The soldiers shouted,

"Long live the King!" and resumed their gaiety at the bivouac; but this

announcement made by the adjutant sent by the Duc de Raguse had not

been communicated to the Dauphin, who was a great lover of discipline

and flew into a rage. The King said to the marshal:

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

The marshal did not find the Dauphin in his own apartments, and waited

for him in the billiard-room with the Duc de Guiche[279] and the Duc de

Ventadour, the Prince's aides-de-camp. The Dauphin entered: at sight

of the marshal, he flushed to his eyes, crossed his ante-chamber with

those singular long strides of his, reached his drawing-room and said

to the marshal:

"Come in!"

The door closed behind them: a great noise was heard; their voices were

raised more and more; the Duc de Ventadour grew anxious and opened the

door; the marshal came out, pursued by the Dauphin, who called him a

double traitor:

"Give up your sword! Give up your sword!" he cried and, flinging

himself upon him, tore his sword from him.

[Sidenote: Anger of the Dauphin.]

M. Delarue, the marshal's aide-de-camp, tried to throw himself between

him and the Dauphin, and was held back by M. de Montgascon. The Prince

endeavoured to break the marshal's sword and, in so doing, cut his

hands. He cried:

"Help, Guards! Seize him!"

The Body-guards rushed in; if the marshal had not made a movement of

the head, their bayonets would have struck him in the face. The Duc de

Raguse was placed under arrest in his room[280].

The King arranged this affair as best he could. It was the more

deplorable as neither of the actors inspired any great interest. When

the son[281] of the Balafré slew Saint-Pol[282], the marshal of the

League, men recognised in this sword-stroke the pride and blood of the

Guises; but, supposing even that Monsieur le Dauphin, a mightier lord

than a Prince of Lorraine, had cut down Marshal Marmont, what would

that have mattered? If the marshal had killed Monsieur le Dauphin, it

would only have been a little more singular. We should see Cæsar, the

descendant of Venus, and Brutus[283], the heir of Junius[284], pass

through the streets without looking at them. Nothing is great to-day,

because nothing is high.

That is, how at Saint-Cloud, the last hour of the Monarchy was spent;

that pale Monarchy, disfigured and blood-stained, resembled the

portrait which d'Urfé makes for us of a great personage dying:

"His eyes were wan and sunk; his lower jaw, covered only with a

little skin, seemed to have disappeared; his beard was bristling,

his colour yellow, his glance slow, his breath bated. Already from

his mouth issued no longer human words, but oracles."

M. le Duc d'Orléans had, throughout his life, entertained for the

throne the inclination that every high-born soul feels for power.

This inclination is modified according to the possessor's character:

impetuous and aspiring, or slack and fawning; imprudent, open, declared

in the former, circumspect, hidden, shamefaced in the latter: one, in

order to elevate himself, is capable of any crime; the other, in order

to rise, can descend to any meanness. M. le Duc d'Orléans belonged to

this latter class of ambitious men. Follow this Prince in his career:

he never says and never does anything completely; he always leaves a

door open for escape. During the Restoration, he flattered the Court

and encouraged liberal opinion; Neuilly became the meeting-place of

discontent and the discontented. They sighed, they pressed each other's

hands with eyes raised to Heaven, but they did not utter a word of

enough significance to be reported in high places. When a member of the

Opposition died, a carriage was sent to the funeral, but the carriage

was empty: the livery is admitted to every door and every grave-side.

If, at the time of my disgrace at Court, I found myself at the

Tuileries on M. le Duc d'Orléans' path, he went past, taking care to

bow to the right, in such a manner that, I being on the left, he turned

his shoulder to me. That would be remarked and would do good.

Was M. le Duc d'Orléans aware beforehand of the Ordinances of July? Was

he told of them by a person who held M. Ouvrard's secret? What did he

think of them? What were his hopes and fears? Did he conceive a plan?

Did he urge M. Laffitte to act as he did act, or did he let M. Laffitte

act as he pleased? To judge from Louis-Philippe's character, we must

presume that he took no resolve, and that his political timidity,

taking refuge in his falseness, awaited events as the spider awaits the

gnat which will be taken in its web. He allowed the moment to conspire;

he himself conspired only by his wishes, of which it is probable that

he was afraid.

[Sidenote: M. le Duc D'Orléans.]

There were two courses open to M. le Duc d'Orléans: the first, and the

more honourable, was to hasten to Saint-Cloud, to interpose himself

between Charles X. and the people, in order to save the crown of the

one and the liberty of the other; the second consisted in flinging

himself on the barricades, with the tricolour flag in his hand, and

placing himself at the head of the movement of the world. Philip had

to choose between the honest man and the great man: he preferred to

pilfer the crown from the King and liberty from the people. During the

confusion and misfortune of a fire, a pickpocket artfully purloins the

most valuable objects from the burning palace, without heeding the

cries of a child which the flames have surprised in its cradle.

The rich prey once seized, plenty of hounds were there for the

distribution of the quarry: then came all those old corruptions of

the preceding systems, those receivers of stolen goods, filthy,

half-crushed toads that have been walked upon a hundred times and that

live, all flattened out as they are. And yet those are the men of whom

one boasts, whose ability one exalts! Milton thought otherwise when he

wrote this passage in a sublime letter:

"If ever God poured a strong love for moral beauty in a man's

breast, he did so in mine. Wherever I meet a man despising the

false esteem of the vulgar, daring to aspire, by his opinions, his

language and his conduct, to the greatest excellence which the

lofty wisdom of the ages has taught us, I become united to that man

by a sort of necessary attachment. There is no power in Heaven or

upon earth which can prevent me from contemplating with respect and

fondness those who have attained the summit of dignity and virtue."

The blind Court of Charles X. never knew where it stood or with whom it

had to do: it might have ordered M. le Duc d'Orléans to Saint-Cloud,

and it is probable that, at the first moment, he would have obeyed;

it might have had him kidnapped at Neuilly, on the very day of the

Ordinances: it took neither course.

On receipt of advices which Madame de Bondy brought him, at Neuilly,

in the night of Tuesday the 27th, Louis-Philippe rose at three o'clock

in the morning and withdrew to a place known only to his family. He

had the double fear of being touched by the insurrection in Paris and

of being arrested by a captain of the Guards. He therefore went to the

Rainey, there in solitude to listen to the distant gun-shots of the

Battle of the Louvre, as I had listened under a tree to those of the

Battle of Waterloo. The feelings which doubtless stirred the Prince

must have had very little in common with those which oppressed me in

the plains of Ghent.

I have told you how, on the morning of the 30th of July, M.

Thiers failed to find the Duc d'Orléans at Neuilly; but Madame la

Duchesse d'Orléans[285] sent to fetch H.R.H.: the Comte Anatole de

Montesquiou[286] was charged with the message. On arriving at the

Rainey, M. de Montesquiou had all the difficulty in the world to decide

Louis-Philippe to return to Neuilly, there to await the deputation from

the Chamber of Deputies.

At last, persuaded by the Duchesse d'Orléans' lord-in-waiting,

Louis-Philippe stepped into his carriage. M. de Montesquiou started

in advance; at first he went pretty fast; but, when he looked back,

he saw H.R.H.'s calash stop and drive back again towards the Rainey.

M. de Montesquiou returned at full speed and entreated the future

majesty, who was hastening to conceal himself in the desert, like the

illustrious Christians who used to flee from the burdensome dignity of

the episcopate: the faithful servant obtained a last unhappy victory.

On the evening of the 30th, the deputation of twelve members of the

Chamber of Deputies, which was to offer the Lieutenant-generalship

of the Kingdom to the Prince, sent him a message to Neuilly.

Louis-Philippe received the message at the park gates, read it by

torch-light, and at once set out for Paris, accompanied by Messieurs

de Berthois[287], Haymès and Oudart. He wore a tricolour favour in his

button-hole: he was going to carry off an old crown from the Royal

Furniture Repository.

On his arrival at the Palais-Royal, M. le Duc d'Orléans sent his

compliments to M. de La Fayette.

The deputation of twelve members of the Chamber of Deputies appeared

at the Palais-Royal. They asked the Prince if he accepted the

Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom; he made an embarrassed reply:

"I have come amongst you to share your dangers.... I have need of

reflection. I must consult various persons. The dispositions of

Saint-Cloud are not at all hostile; the King's presence lays duties

upon me."

[Sidenote: Eating his words.]

Thus replied Louis-Philippe. He was made to eat his words, as he

expected: after withdrawing for half-an-hour, he reappeared, bearing

a proclamation by virtue of which he accepted the functions of

Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom. The proclamation ended with this

declaration:

"The Charter will henceforward be a reality!"

The proclamation was taken to the Elective Chamber and received with

that fifty-year-old revolutionary enthusiasm: another proclamation was

issued in reply, drawn up by M. Guizot[288]. The deputies returned to

the Palais-Royal; the Prince became affected, accepted afresh, and

could not help bewailing the deplorable circumstances which forced him

to be Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom.

Stunned by the blows that had been struck at it, the Republic tried

to defend itself; but its real head, General La Fayette, had almost

abandoned it. He delighted in the concert of adoration that reached

him from every side; he greedily inhaled the perfume of revolution; he

was enchanted at the idea that he was the arbiter of France, that he

was able, by stamping the earth with his foot, to cause a republic or

a monarchy to spring up, as he pleased; he loved to lull himself in

the uncertainty which pleases minds that dread conclusions, because an

instinct warns them that they cease to be anything when the facts are

accomplished.

The other republican leaders had ruined themselves in advance by their

several works: the praises of the Terror had reminded Frenchmen of 1793

and caused them to recoil. The re-establishment of the National Guard

at the same time killed the principle or the power of insurrection in

the combatants of July. M. de La Fayette did not perceive that, in

dreaming of the Republic, he had armed three millions of fighting men

against it.

[Sidenote: The D'Orléans pedigree.]

Be this as it may, ashamed of being duped so soon, the younger men made

some show of resistance. They replied by proclamations and posters

to the proclamations and posters of the Duc d'Orléans. He was told

that, if the deputies had so far lowered themselves as to beseech him

to accept the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom, the Chamber of

Deputies, elected under an aristocratic law, had no right to manifest

the will of the people. It was proved to Louis-Philippe that he was the

son of Louis Philippe Joseph; that Louis Philippe Joseph was the son

of Louis Philippe[289]; that Louis Philippe was the son of Louis[290],

who was the son of Philip II.[291] the Regent; that Philip II. was the

son of Philip I.[292] who was the brother of Louis XIV.: therefore

Louis-Philippe d'Orléans was a Bourbon and Capet, not a Valois. M.

Laffitte nevertheless continued to look upon him as belonging to the

dynasty of Charles IX. and Henry III., and said:

"Thiers knows all about it."

Later, the Lointier gathering[293] protested that the nation was in

arms to maintain its rights by force. The central committee of the 12th

Ward declared that the people had not been consulted on the method

of its Constitution, that the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of

Peers, holding their powers from Charles X., had fallen with him and

could not, in consequence, represent the nation; that the Provisional

Government must remain in permanence, under the presidency of La

Fayette, until a Constitution had been discussed and fixed as the

fundamental basis of government.

On the morning of the 30th, there was a question of proclaiming the

Republic. A few determined men threatened to kill the Municipal

Commission if it did not keep the power in its hands. Did they not

also blame the House of Peers? They were furious at its audacity. The

audacity of the House of Peers! Surely this must have been the last

outrage and the last injustice which it expected to receive at the

hands of public opinion!

A plan was formed: twenty of the most fiery young men were to lie in

wait in a little street running into the Quai de la Ferraille and fire

on Louis-Philippe when he went from the Palais-Royal to the Hôtel de

Ville. They were stopped and told that they would at the same time be

killing Laffitte, Pajol and Benjamin Constant. Lastly it was proposed

to kidnap the Duc d'Orléans and put him on board ship at Cherbourg: a

strange meeting, if Charles X. and Philip had come together again in

the same port, on the same vessel, one dispatched to a foreign shore by

the middle class, the other by the Republicans!

The Duc d'Orléans, having made up his mind to go to have his title

confirmed by the tribunes of the Hôtel de Ville, went down into the

court-yard of the Palais-Royal, surrounded by eighty-nine deputies

in caps, in round hats, in dress-coats, in frock-coats. The royal

candidate mounted a white horse; he was followed by Benjamin Constant,

tossed about in a chair by two Savoyards. Messieurs Méchin[294] and

Viennet[295], covered with dust and perspiration, walked between the

white horse of the future monarch and the barrow of the gouty deputy,

quarrelling with the two porters to make them keep the required

distance. A half-drunken drummer beat the drum at the head of the

procession. Four ushers served as lictors. The more zealous deputies

bellowed:

"Long live the Duc d'Orléans!"

[Sidenote: Philip at the Palais-Royal.]

Around the Palais-Royal these cries met with some response; but, as the

troop approached the Hôtel de Ville, the spectators became derisive

or silent. Philip threw himself about on his triumphal steed and

constantly took shelter beneath the buckler of M. Laffitte, from whom

he received a few patronizing words on the way. He smiled to General

Gérard, made signs of intelligence to M. Viennet and M. Méchin, and

begged the crown of the people with his hat adorned with a yard of

tricolour ribbon, putting out his hand to whosoever on his way was

willing to drop an alms into it. The strolling monarchy reached the

Place de Grève, where it was greeted with cries of "The Republic for

ever!"

When the royal electoral matter made its way inside the Hôtel de

Ville, the postulant was received with more threatening murmurs: a

few zealous servants who shouted his name were punched for their

pains. He entered the Throne Room; here were crowded the wounded and

fighters of the Three Days: a general shout of "No more Bourbons! Long

live La Fayette!" shook the rafters of the hall. The Prince appeared

embarrassed. M. Viennet, on behalf of M. Laffitte, read the declaration

of the Deputies; it was heard in profound silence. The Duc d'Orléans

spoke a few words of adhesion. Then M. Dubourg said roughly to Philip:

"You have taken serious engagements. If ever you fail to keep them,

we are the people to remind you of them." Whereupon the future King

replied, with great emotion:

"Sir, I am an honest man."

M. de La Fayette, seeing the growing uncertainty of the assembly,

suddenly took it in his head to abdicate the Presidency: he handed the

Duc d'Orléans a tricolour flag, stepped out on the balcony of the Hôtel

de Ville, and embraced the Prince before the eyes of the gaping crowd,

while the Duke waved the national flag. La Fayette's republican kiss

made a king: a curious outcome of the whole career of the "hero of the

Two Worlds!"

And then, rub-a-dub! the litter of Benjamin Constant and the white

horse of Louis-Philippe went home again, half hooted, half blessed,

from the political factory on the Grève to the Palais-Marchand.

"That same day," says M. Louis Blanc, "and not far from the Hôtel

de Ville, a wherry moored at the foot of the Morgue and surmounted

by a black flag, received corpses which were lowered in barrows.

These corpses were piled up in heaps and covered with straw; and

the crowd, which had gathered along the parapets of the Seine,

looked on in silence[296]."

Speaking of the States of the League and the making of a king,

Palma-Cayet[297] exclaims:

"I pray you to picture to yourselves what answer could have made

that little goodman Master Matthieu Delaunay and M. Boucher,

curate of Saint-Benoît, and any other of that condition to one who

should have told them that they must be employed to instal a king

in France to their fancy?... True Frenchmen have always held in

contempt that form of electing kings, which makes them masters and

servants together."

Philip had not come to the end of his trials; he had many more hands

to shake, many more embraces to receive: he still had to blow very

many kisses, to bow very low to the passers-by, to humour the crowd

by coming many times on the balcony of the Tuileries to sing the

Marseillaise.

A certain number of Republicans had met, on the morning of the 31st,

at the office of the _National_: when they knew that the Duc d'Orléans

had been appointed Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, they wished

to know the opinions of the man destined to become King in spite of

them. They were taken to the Palais-Royal by M. Thiers: there were

Messieurs Bastide, Thomas, Joubert[298], Cavaignac[299], Marchais,

Degousée[300], and Guinard. The Prince at first said many fine things

to them about liberty:

"You are not King yet," retorted Bastide; "listen to the truth: soon

you will have no lack of flatterers."

"Your father," added Cavaignac, "was a regicide like mine; that

separates you a little from the others."

[Sidenote: Embraces La Fayette.]

Followed mutual congratulations on the regicide, accompanied

nevertheless by a judicious remark from Philip, to the effect that

there are things which we should remember in order not to imitate them.

Some Republicans who were not at the meeting at the _National_ entered.

M. Trélat said to Philip:

"The people is the master; your functions are provisional; the people

must express its wish: do you consult it, yes or no?"

M. Thiers interrupted this dangerous speech by tapping M. Thomas on the

shoulder and saying:

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

"That is true," answered Louis-Philippe.

"What is he talking about?" they exclaimed. "Does he take us for a band

that has come to sell itself?"

And on every side rose contradictory phrases:

"It's a tower of Babel! And that's what they call a Citizen King! The

Republic? You had better govern with Republicans!"

And M. Thiers exclaiming:

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

Then M. de La Fayette came down to the Palais-Royal: the citizen was

nearly stifled under the embraces of his King. The whole house was

ready to die.

Men in jackets were at the posts of honour, men in caps in the

drawing-rooms, men in smocks sat down to table with the Princes

and Princesses; in the council-chamber there were chairs, but no

arm-chairs; all spoke who would; Louis-Philippe, seated between M. de

La Fayette and M. Laffitte, their arms entwined round each other's

shoulders, beamed expansively with equality and happiness.

I would have liked to employ more gravity in my description of those

scenes which produced a great revolution, or, to speak more correctly,

of those scenes by which the transformation of the world will be

hastened: but I saw them; deputies who acted in them could not help

showing a certain confusion, when they told me how, on the 31st of

July, they went to forge--a king.

To Henry IV., before he became a Catholic, men raised objections which

did not degrade him and which were measured by the level of the Throne

itself: they told him that "St. Louis had been canonized, not at

Geneva, but in Rome; that, if the King were not a Catholic, he would

not hold the first place among the kings of Christendom; that it was

not seemly that the King should pray in one wise and his people in

another; that the King could not be crowned at Rheims, nor buried at

Saint-Denis, if he were not a Catholic."

What was the objection raised against Philip before his final election?

Men objected that he was not "patriot" enough.

To-day, when the Revolution is consummated, men take offense if one

dare remind them of what took place at the start; they fear to diminish

the solidity of the position they have taken up, and whosoever does

not find in the origin of the incipient fact the gravity of the

accomplished fact is a traducer.

When a dove descended to bring the Holy Oil to Clovis; when the

long-haired kings were raised upon a buckler; when St. Louis, in his

premature virtue, trembled at his coronation while pronouncing the

oath to employ his authority only for the glory of God and the welfare

of his people; when Henry IV., after his entry into Paris, went to

prostrate himself at Notre-Dame, and men saw, or thought they saw, on

his right, a beautiful child who defended him and who was taken to be

his guardian angel: I conceive that the diadem was a sacred thing;

the Oriflamme rested in the tabernacles of Heaven. But, now that a

sovereign, on a public square, with hair cut short and hands tied

behind his back, has lowered his head beneath the blade to the sound

of the drum; now that another sovereign, surrounded by the rabble, has

gone to beg votes for his "election," to the sound of the same drum,

on another public square: who keeps the smallest illusion touching

the crown? Who believes that that soiled and battered monarchy can

still impose upon the world? What man, feeling his heart beat ever so

little, would swallow power in that cup of shame and disgust which

Philip emptied at one draught without a qualm? European monarchy could

have continued its life, if in France they had preserved the parent

monarchy, the daughter of a saint and of a great man; but her seed has

been dispersed: nothing will be born of her again.

You have seen the Monarchy of the Grève march dusty and breathless

under the tricolour flag, in the midst of its insolent friends: see

now the Royalty of Rheims retire, with measured steps, in the midst of

its almoners and its guards, walking in accordance with the exactest

etiquette, hearing no word but words of respect, revered even by those

who detested it. The soldier, little though he esteemed it, died for

it; the White Flag, laid upon its bier before being folded away for

ever, said to the wind:

"Salute me: I was at Ivry; I saw Turenne die; the English knew me at

Fontenoy; I made liberty triumph under Washington; I have delivered

Greece, and I still wave from the walls of Algiers!"

[Sidenote: The Duc D'Angoulême.]

On the 31st, at daybreak, at the very hour when the Duc

d'Orléans, after arriving in Paris, was preparing to accept the

Lieutenant-generalship, the servants at Saint-Cloud came to the bivouac

on the Sèvres Bridge, saying that they were discharged and that the

King had left at half-past three in the morning. The soldiers became

excited, but grew calm again when the Dauphin appeared: he rode up on

horse-back, as though to carry them with him by one of those phrases

which lead the French to death or victory; he stopped in front of the

ranks, stammered a few sentences, turned short, and went back to the

Palace. It was not courage that failed him, but speech. The miserable

education of our Princes of the Elder Branch, since Louis XIV.,

rendered them incapable of supporting a contradiction, of expressing

themselves like everybody else, and of mixing with the rest of mankind.

Meanwhile, the heights of Sèvres and the terraces of Bellevue were

crowned with men of the people: a few musket-shots were exchanged. The

captain commanding the advance-guard on the Sèvres Bridge went over

to the enemy; he took a piece of cannon and a part of his soldiers

to the bands that had gathered on the Point-du-Jour Road. Then the

Parisians and the Guards agreed that no hostilities should take place

until the evacuation of Saint-Cloud and of Sèvres was effected. The

retiring movement began; the Swiss were hemmed in by the inhabitants

of Sèvres and flung away their arms, although they were almost at once

extricated by the Lancers, whose lieutenant-colonel was wounded. The

troops passed through Versailles, where the National Guard had been on

duty since the preceding day, with La Rochejacquelein's Grenadiers, the

first under the tricolour, the second with the white cockade. Madame

la Dauphine arrived from Vichy and joined the Royal Family at Trianon,

the favourite residence of Marie-Antoinette. At Trianon, M. de Polignac

took leave of his master.

It has been said that Madame la Dauphine was opposed to the Ordinances.

The only way to judge kings correctly is to consider them in their

essence: the plebeian will always be on the side of liberty; the

prince will always lean towards power. We must ascribe this to them as

neither a crime nor a merit: it is their nature. Madame la Dauphine

would probably have wished that the Ordinances had appeared at a more

opportune moment, after better precautions had been taken to ensure

their success; but in reality they pleased her and were bound to please

her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry was delighted with them. Those two

Princesses believed that the Royalty, once its own master, would be

free from the shackles which representative government fastens to the

sovereign's feet.

One is astonished, in the events of July, not to meet with the

Diplomatic Body, which was only too much consulted by the Court and

which interfered too much in our business.

There was twice a question of the foreign ambassadors in our last

troubles. A man was arrested at the barriers and the packet of which he

was the bearer sent to the Hôtel de Ville: it was a dispatch from M. de

Lœwenhielm[301] to the King of Sweden. M. Baude sent back the dispatch

unopened to the Swedish Legation. Lord Stuart's[302] correspondence

fell into the hands of the popular leaders and was similarly returned

without being opened, which did wonders in London. Lord Stuart, like

all his fellow-countrymen, adored disorder in foreign countries: with

him, diplomacy was police-duty, dispatches reports. He liked me well

enough when I was Foreign Minister, because I treated him without

ceremony and because my door was always open to him; he used to come to

me at all hours, in boots, dirty, with disordered dress, after visiting

the boulevards and the ladies, whom he paid badly and who called him

"Stuart."

I had conceived diplomacy on a new plan: having nothing to conceal,

I spoke aloud; I would have shown my dispatches to the first-comer,

because I had no project for the glory of France which I was not

determined to accomplish in spite of all opposition.

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

meant what I said:

"Do not pick a quarrel with me: if you throw down the gauntlet to me,

I shall pick it up. France has never made war on you with a proper

understanding of your position; that is why you have beaten us: but

don't rely on this[303]."

[Sidenote: Lord Stuart de Rothesay.]

Lord Stuart, therefore, beheld our "troubles of July" with all that

good nature which rejoices over our misfortunes. But the members of

the Diplomatic Body hostile to the popular cause had more or less

urged Charles X. in the direction of the Ordinances; and yet, when

they appeared, the ambassadors did nothing to save the Sovereign. If

M. Pozzo di Borgo[304] showed some anxiety concerning a _coup d'État_,

this was on behalf of neither the King nor the people.

Two things are certain:

First, the Revolution attacked the treaties of the Quadruple Alliance:

the France of the Bourbons formed part of that alliance; the Bourbons

could not, therefore, be violently dispossessed without endangering the

new political right of Europe.

Secondly, in a monarchy, the foreign legations are not accredited to

the government, but to the monarch. The strict duty of those legations,

therefore, was to gather round Charles X. and to attend on him so long

as he remained on French soil.

Is it not singular that the only ambassador to whom this idea occurred

should have been the representative of Bernadotte, of a King who

did not belong to the old families of sovereigns? M. de Lœwenhielm

was on the point of bringing the Baron de Werther[305] over to his

opinion, when M. Pozzo di Borgo opposed a measure which his credentials

prescribed and honour demanded.

Had the Diplomatic Body gone to Saint-Cloud, Charles X.'s position

would have been different: the partisans of the Legitimacy in the

Elective Chamber would have gained a strength which they lacked at

first; the fear of a war would have alarmed the working class; the

idea of preserving peace by keeping Henry V.[306] would have drawn a

considerable mass of the population over to the royal infant's party.

M. Pozzo di Borgo stood aloof so as not to compromise his securities on

the Bourse or at his bankers', and especially not to expose his place.

He played at five per cent, on the corpse of the Capetian Legitimacy,

a corpse which will communicate death to the other living kings. He

will not fail, some time hence, to try, according to custom, to pass

off this irreparable fault, due to personal interest, as a profound

combination.

Ambassadors left too long at the same Court adopt the manners of the

country in which they reside. Charmed to live in the midst of honours,

no longer seeing things as they are, they are afraid of passing in

their dispatches a truth which might bring about a change in their

position. It is, in fact, a different thing to be Esterhazy[307],

Werther, Pozzo in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or to be Their

Excellencies the Ambassadors to the Court of France. It has been said

that M. Pozzo bore a grudge against Louis XVIII. and Charles X. in

the matter of the Blue Ribbon and the peerage. They were wrong not to

satisfy him; he had rendered services to the Bourbons, for hatred of

his fellow-countryman[308], Bonaparte. But if, at Ghent, he decided

the question of the throne, by provoking the sudden departure of Louis

XVIII. for Paris, he can now boast that, by preventing the Diplomatic

Body from doing its duty in the Days of July, he has helped to throw

from the head of Charles X. the crown which he assisted in placing on

the brow of his brother.

[Sidenote: The diplomatic body.]

I have long been of opinion that diplomatic bodies, born in centuries

subject to a different law of nations, are no longer in keeping with

the new society: public governments, easy communications bring about

that nowadays Cabinets are in a position to treat direct or simply

through the intermediary of their consular agents, whose number should

be increased and their condition improved: for, at this hour, Europe

is an industrial continent. Titled spies, with exorbitant pretensions,

who meddle with everything to give themselves an importance which they

cannot retain, serve only to disturb the Cabinets to which they are

accredited and to feed their masters with illusions. Charles X., on his

side, was wrong not to invite the Diplomatic Body to join his Court;

but what he saw seemed to him a dream: he went from one surprise to the

other. It was thus that he did not send for M. le Duc d'Orléans; for,

thinking himself in danger only from the side of the Republic, the risk

of an usurpation never entered his thoughts.

Charles X. set out in the evening for Rambouillet with the Princesses

and M. le Duc de Bordeaux. The new role played by M. le Duc d'Orléans

gave rise to the first ideas of abdication in the King's head. Monsieur

le Dauphin remained with the rear-guard, but did not mix with the

soldiers; at Trianon he ordered what remained of wine and food to be

distributed among them.

At a quarter past eight in the evening, the different corps set

forward. There the fidelity of the 5th Light Regiment expired. Instead

of following the movement, it returned to Paris: its colours were

brought to Charles X., who refused to accept them, as he had refused to

accept those of the 50th.

The brigades were all confused, the several arms intermingled; the

cavalry outpaced the infantry and halted separately. At midnight, on

the 31st of July, a stop was made at Trappes. The Dauphin slept at a

house at the back of the village.

The next morning, the 1st of August, he started for Rambouillet,

leaving the troops bivouacked at Trappes. These broke up camp at

eleven. A few soldiers who had gone to buy bread in the hamlets were

massacred.

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

During the night of the 1st of August, three regiments of heavy

cavalry went back to their old garrisons. It is believed that General

Bordesoulle[309], commanding the heavy cavalry of the Guard, had made

his capitulation at Versailles. The 2nd Grenadiers also went off on

the morning of the 2nd, after sending in its colours to the King. The

Dauphin met these deserting Grenadiers; they formed in line to do

honour to the Prince, and continued their road. Strange mixture of

disloyalty and good manners! In this three days' revolution, no one

betrayed any passion; each acted according to the idea he had formed of

his rights or his duties: the rights conquered, the duties fulfilled,

no enmity and no affection remained. The one feared lest the rights

should carry him too far, the other lest the duties should exceed their

limits. Perhaps it has only once happened, and perhaps it will never

happen again, that a people stopped within reach of its victory, and

that soldiers who had defended a King, so long as he seemed to wish

to fight, returned their standards to him before abandoning him. The

Ordinances had released the people from its oath; the retreat, on the

field of battle, released the grenadier from his flag.

Charles X. retiring, the Republicans withdrawing, there was nothing to

prevent the Elected Monarchy from moving forward. The provinces, always

sheep-like and the slaves of Paris, at each movement of the telegraph

and at each tricolour flag perched on the top of a diligence, shouted,

"Long live Philip!" or, "The Revolution for ever!"

The opening of the session being fixed for the 3rd of August, the Peers

repaired to the Chamber of Deputies: I went there, for everything

was as yet provisional. There another act of melodrama was performed:

the throne remained empty, and the Anti-king sat down beside it, as

who should say the Lord Chancellor opening a session of the British

Parliament, in the Sovereign's absence.

Philip spoke of the painful necessity in which he had found himself

of accepting the Lieutenant-generalship to save us all, of the

revision of Article XIV. of the Charter, of the feeling for liberty

which he, Philip, bore in his heart and which he was about to pour

over us, together with peace over Europe: a hocus-pocus of speech and

constitution repeated at each phase of our history since the last

half-century. But attention grew very lively when the Prince made the

following declaration:

[Sidenote: Abdication of Charles X.]

"Peers and deputies,

"So soon as the two Chambers are constituted, I will communicate

to you the act of abdication of His Majesty King Charles X. By the

same act, Louis Antoine of France, the Dauphin, likewise renounces

his rights. This act was placed in my hands at eleven o'clock last

night, the 2nd of August. This morning I have ordered it to be

deposited in the archives of the House of Peers and to be inserted

in the official part of the _Moniteur_."

By a contemptible trick and a cowardly omission, the Duc d'Orléans

here suppressed the name of Henry V., in whose favour the two Kings

had abdicated. If, at that time, every Frenchman could have been

individually consulted, it is probable that the majority would have

pronounced in favour of Henry V.; even a section of the Republicans

would have accepted him, giving him La Fayette for a mentor. Had the

germ of the Legitimacy remained in France and the two old Kings gone

to end their days in Rome, none of the difficulties which surround an

usurpation and render it suspicious to the various parties would have

existed. The adoption of the Younger Branch of Bourbon was not only a

danger, it was a political solecism: New France is Republican; she does

not want a king, at least she does not want a king of the old dynasty.

A few years more, and we shall see what will become of our liberties

and what that peace will be which is to gladden the world. If we may

judge of the future conduct of the new personage elected by what we

know of his character, it is safe to presume that this Prince will

think that the only way to preserve his monarchy is by oppression at

home and grovelling abroad.

The real wrong done by Louis-Philippe is not that he accepted the

crown, an act of ambition of which there are thousands of examples and

which attacks only a political institution; his true crime is that he

was a faithless guardian, that he "robbed the child and the orphan," a

crime for which the Scriptures do not contain enough curses: now moral

justice (let who will call it fatality or Providence, I call it the

inevitable consequences of evil-doing) has never failed to punish the

infractions of moral law.

Philip, his government, all that order of impossible and contradictory

things will perish, within a period more or less delayed by fortuitous

circumstances, by complications of internal and external interests, by

the apathy and corruption of individuals, by the levity of men's minds,

the indifference and effacement of their characters; but, whatever the

duration of the present system may be, it will never be long enough for

the Orleans Branch to take deep root.

Charles X., apprized of the progress of the Revolution, possessing

nothing in his age or his character fitted to stem that progress,

thought that he was warding off the blow struck at his House by

abdicating together with his son, as Philip announced to the Deputies.

On the 1st of August he wrote a line approving of the opening of the

session and, counting on the sincere attachment of his cousin the Duc

d'Orléans, he in his turn appointed him Lieutenant-general of the

Kingdom. He went further on the 2nd, for he wanted nothing more than

to take ship, and he asked for commissaries to protect him as far as

Cherbourg. These apparitors were not at once received by the Military

Household. Bonaparte also had commissaries as guards: the first time

Russian, the second French; but he had not asked for them.

[Sidenote: Letter from Charles to Philip.]

Here is Charles X.'s letter:

"RAMBOUILLET, 2 _August_ 1830.

"COUSIN,

"I am too deeply distressed at the evils with which my people are

afflicted and threatened not to seek the means of removing them.

I have therefore resolved to abdicate the crown in favour of my

grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux.

"The Dauphin, who shares my sentiments, also renounces his rights

in favour of his nephew.

"You will, therefore, in your capacity of Lieutenant-general of

the Kingdom, cause the accession of Henry V. to the crown to be

proclaimed. You will take all the other measures which concern

you, for regulating the forms of government during the minority of

the new King. I here confine myself to the communication of these

arrangements, as the means of avoiding yet many more evils.

"You will communicate my intentions to the Diplomatic Body, and

you will take the earliest opportunity of making known to me the

proclamation by which my grandson is recognised as King, under the

title of Henry V.[310]...

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

I am

"Your affectionate cousin,

"CHARLES."

If M. le Duc d'Orléans had been capable of emotion or remorse, would

not this signature, "Your affectionate cousin," have struck him to the

heart? So little doubt had they at Rambouillet of the efficacy of the

abdications that the young Prince was being made ready for his journey:

his ægis, the tricolour cockade, was already fashioned by the hands

of the most zealous promoters of the Ordinances. Suppose that Madame

la Duchesse de Berry had suddenly set out with her son and appeared

in the Chamber of Deputies at the moment when M. le Duc d'Orléans was

delivering his opening speech, two chances remained: dangerous chances,

but, at least, the child removed to Heaven would not have dragged out

days of misery on foreign soil.

My counsels, my prayers, my cries were powerless; I asked in vain for

Marie-Caroline: the mother of Bayard, as he was preparing to quit the

paternal castle, "wept," says the _Loyal Serviteur_:

"The good gentle woman came out from the back of the tower, and sent

for her son, to whom she spake these words:

"'Pierre, my friend, be sweet and courteous, putting from you all

pride; be humble and serviceable to all men; be loyal in deeds and

words; be helpful to poor widows and orphans, and God will recompense

you....'

"Then the good ladye drew out of her sleeve a little purse in which

were only six crowns in gold and one in small silver, the which she

gave to her son."

The knight without fear and without reproach rode away with six golden

crowns in a little purse to become the bravest and most renowned

of captains. Henry, who perhaps has not six gold crowns, will have

very different combats to wage; he will have to fight misfortune,

a difficult champion to throw. Let us glorify the mothers who give

such tender and good lessons to their sons! Blessed, then, be you, my

mother, from whom I derive all that may have honoured and disciplined

my life!

Forgive me for all these recollections; but perhaps the tyranny of my

memory, by introducing the past into the present, takes from the latter

a part of its wretchedness.

The three commissaries deputed to Charles X. were Messieurs de Schonen,

Odilon Barrot and Marshal Maison. They were sent back by the military

posts, and started to return to Paris. A wave of the populace carried

them back to Rambouillet.

The rumour spread, on the evening of the 2nd, that Charles X. refused

to leave Rambouillet before his grand-son was recognised. A multitude

gathered in the Champs-Élysées on the morning of the 3rd, shouting:

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

from it!"

There were rich men mixed among these groups, but, when the moment

came, they allowed the "rabble" to set out without them. General Pajol

placed himself at their head, taking Colonel Jacqueminot[311] as his

chief of staff. The returning commissaries, meeting the scouts of this

column, turned on their steps and were then admitted to Rambouillet.

The King questioned them on the strength of the insurgents and then,

withdrawing, sent for Maison, who owed him his fortune and his

marshal's baton:

"Maison, I ask you on your honour as a soldier, is what the

commissaries have told me the truth?"

The marshal replied:

"They have told you only half the truth."

[Sidenote: Charles X. at Rambouillet.]

There remained at Rambouillet, on the 3rd of August, 3500 men of the

Infantry of the Guard, and four regiments of Light Cavalry, forming

twenty squadrons and consisting of 2000 men. The Military Household,

Body-guards and so on amounted, horse and foot, to 1300 men: in all,

8800 men and seven batteries consisting of 42 pieces of artillery

with their teams. At ten o'clock at night, the signal was sounded to

saddle; the whole camp started for Maintenon, Charles X. and his Family

marching in the midst of the funeral column, which was scarce lighted

by the veiled moon.

And before whom were they retreating? Before a band almost unarmed,

arriving in omnibuses, in cabs, in traps from Versailles and

Saint-Cloud. General Pajol thought that he was quite lost when he was

obliged to place himself at the head of that multitude[312], which,

after all, did not amount to more than 15,000 men, with the adjunction

of the newly-arrived Rouennese. Half of this band remained on the

roads. A few exalted, valiant and generous young men, mingled with this

troop, would have sacrificed themselves; the rest would probably have

dispersed. In the fields of Rambouillet, in the flat open country, they

would have had to face the fire of the Line and of the Artillery; by

all appearances, a victory would have been won. Between the people's

victory in Paris and the King's victory at Rambouillet, negociations

would have been entered upon.

What! Among so many officers, was there not one with sufficient

resolution to seize the command in the name of Henry V.? For, after

all, Charles X. and the Dauphin were Kings no longer.

If they did not wish to fight, why did they not retire to Chartres?

There, they would have been out of the reach of the Paris populace.

Or, better still, to Tours, supported by the Legitimist provinces? Had

Charles X. remained in France, the greater part of the army would have

remained loyal. The camps at Boulogne and Lunéville were raised and

were marching to his aid. My nephew, the Comte Louis, was bringing his

regiment, the 4th Light Infantry, which left the ranks only on hearing

of the retreat from Rambouillet. M. de Chateaubriand was reduced to

escorting the Monarch on a pony to his place of embarkation. If,

repairing to some town, protected against a first surprise, Charles

X. had convoked the two Chambers, more than half of those Chambers

would have obeyed. Casimir Périer, General Sébastiani and a hundred

others had waited, had struggled against the tricolour cockade;

they dreaded the dangers of a popular revolution: what am I saying?

The Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, summoned by the King and not

seeing the battle won, would have stolen away from his partisans and

conformed to the royal injunction. The Diplomatic Body, which did not

do its duty, would have done it then by placing itself around the

Sovereign. The Republic, installed in Paris amidst all the disorders,

would not have lasted a month in the face of a regular constitutional

government, established elsewhere. Never has the game been lost with so

fine a hand, and, when a game is lost in this way, there is no revenge

possible: go talk of liberty to the citizens and of honour to the

soldiers after the Ordinances of July and the retreat from Saint-Cloud!

The time will perhaps come, when a new form of society will have taken

the place of the present social order, when war will appear a monstrous

absurdity, when its very principle will no longer be understood;

but we have not reached that stage yet. In armed quarrels, there

are philanthropists who distinguish between the species and who are

prepared to swoon away at the mere word of civil war:

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

to face!"

All this is very sad, no doubt; and yet a nation has often been

regenerated and acquired new vigour in intestine discords. None has

ever perished by a civil war; many have disappeared in foreign wars.

See what Italy was, at the time of her divisions, and see what she

is now. It is a deplorable thing to be obliged to lay waste your

neighbour's property, to see your own home blooded by that same

neighbour; but, frankly, is it much more humane to slay a family of

German peasants whom you do not know, who have never had a discussion

with you of any kind, whom you rob, whom you kill without remorse,

whose wives and children you dishonour with a safe conscience, because

this is war? Whatever men may say, civil wars are less unjust, less

revolting and more natural than foreign wars, except when the latter

are undertaken to save the national independence. Civil wars are

based at least upon individual outrages, upon admitted and recognised

aversions; they are duels with seconds, in which the adversaries know

why they are wielding their swords. If the passions do not justify

the evil, they excuse it, they explain it, they give a reason for its

existence. How is foreign war justified? Generally, nations cut each

other's throats because a king is bored, because an ambitious man

wishes to rise, because a minister seeks to supplant a rival. The time

has come to do justice on those old common-places of sentimentalism,

better suited to poets than historians: Thucydides, Cæsar, Livy are

content to utter a word of sorrow and pass on.

[Sidenote: Thoughts on Civil war.]

Civil war, in spite of its calamities, has only one real danger: if

the contending factions have recourse to the foreigner, or if the

foreigner, profiting by the divisions of a people, attack it; such

a position might result in conquest. Great Britain, the Iberian

Peninsula, Constantinopolitan Greece, in our own days Poland offer

examples which we must not forget. Nevertheless, during the League,

the two parties calling Spaniards and English, Italians and Germans to

their aid, the latter counter-balanced each other and did not disturb

the equilibrium which the French in arms maintained among themselves.

Charles X. was wrong to employ bayonets in support of his Ordinances;

his ministers have no justification to offer, whether they were acting

in obedience or not, for having shed the blood of the people and the

soldiers, whom no hatred divided, in the same way as the theoretical

Terrorists would gladly reproduce the system of the Terror, when no

Terror exists. But Charles X. was also wrong not to accept war when,

after he had yielded on every point, it was brought to his door. He had

no right, after placing the diadem on the brow of his grandson, to say

to that new Joas:

"I have made you ascend the throne, to drag you into exile, so that,

wretched and banished, you may bear the weight of my years, my

proscription and my sceptre."

He was not right at the same moment to give Henry V. a crown and to

rob him of France. When they made him King, they had condemned him to

die on the soil in which lie mingled the dust of St. Louis and that of

Henry IV.

For the rest, after this ebullition of my blood, I return to my reason,

and I see in these things no more than the accomplishment of the

destinies of humanity. The Court, had it triumphed by force of arms,

would have destroyed the public liberties; they would none the less

have crushed it one day; but it would have retarded the development of

society for some years; all that had taken a wide view of the Monarchy

would have been persecuted by the re-established Congregation. In the

last result, events have followed the trend of civilization. God makes

men powerful according to His secret designs: He gives them faults

which undo them when they must be undone, because He does not wish that

qualities ill-applied by a false intelligence should oppose themselves

to the decrees of His Providence.

The retirement of the Royal Family reduced my part to myself. I no

longer thought of what I should be called upon to say in the House of

Peers. To write was impossible: if the attack had come from the enemies

of the Crown; if Charles X. had been overthrown by a conspiracy from

the outside, I should have taken up my pen and, if they had left me

independence of thought, I should have undertaken to rally an immense

party around the ruins of the throne; but the attack had come from

the Crown itself; the Ministers had violated both liberal principles;

they had made the Royalty commit perjury, not intentionally, no doubt,

but in fact; through this very act they had taken away my strength.

What could I put forward in favour of the Ordinances? How could I have

continued to extol the sincerity, the candour, the chivalry of the

Legitimate Monarchy? How could I have said that it was the strongest

guarantee of our interests, our laws and our independence? The champion

of the old Royalty, I had been stripped of my arms by that Royalty and

left naked to mine enemies.

I was therefore quite astonished when, reduced to this state of

weakness, I saw myself sought out by the new Royalty. Charles X. has

disdained my services; Philip made an effort to attach me to himself.

First, M. Arago spoke to me, in lofty and lively terms, on behalf

of Madame Adélaïde; next the Comte Anatole de Montesquiou came one

morning to Madame Récamier's and met me there. He told me that Madame

la Duchesse d'Orléans and M. le Duc d'Orléans would be delighted to see

me, if I would go to the Palais-Royal. They were at that time engaged

upon the declaration which was to transform the Lieutenant-generalship

of the Kingdom into the Royalty. Perhaps H.R.H. had thought it well to

try to weaken my opposition before. I pronounced myself. He may also

have thought that I looked upon myself as released by the flight of the

three Kings.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse D'Orléans.]

These overtures of M. de Montesquiou's surprised me. However, I

did not reject them; for, without flattering myself with hopes of

success, I thought that I might utter some useful truths. I went to

the Palais-Royal with the lord-in-waiting to the future Queen. I was

admitted by the entrance leading out of the Rue de Valois, and found

Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans and Madame Adélaïde in their private

apartments. I had had the honour of being presented to them before.

Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans made me sit down beside her, and said to

me, off-hand:

"Ah, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, we are very unhappy! If all the parties

would only unite together, perhaps we might yet be saved! What do you

think of all this?"

"Madame," I replied, "nothing is easier: Charles X. and Monsieur le

Dauphin have abdicated; Henry is now the King; Monseigneur le Duc

d'Orléans is Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom: let him act as Regent

during the minority of Henry V., and all is settled."

"But, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, the people are very much excited; we

shall fall into anarchy!"

"Madame, may I venture to ask you what are the intentions of

Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans? Will he accept the crown, if it is

offered to him?"

The two Princesses hesitated to answer. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans

replied, after a momentary pause:

"Think, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, of the misfortunes that may happen.

All honest men must combine to save us from the Republic. In Rome you

might render us such great services, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, or even

here, if you do not care to leave France again!"

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

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

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

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you do not know my niece[313]: she is

so frivolous!... Poor Caroline!... I am going to send for M. le Duc

d'Orléans: he will persuade you better than I can."

The Princess gave instructions, and Louis-Philippe arrived after a

quarter of an hour. He was badly-dressed and looked extremely tired. I

rose, and the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom accosted me with:

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

And forthwith he spun me an idyll on the happiness which he enjoyed

in the country, on the peaceful life, so much to his liking, which he

spent in the midst of his children. I seized the moment of a pause

between two strophes to speak in my turn and respectfully to repeat, in

almost the same words, what I had said to the two Princesses.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "that is what I should like! How happy I should

be to be the guardian and the upholder of that child! I think just as

you do, Monsieur de Chateaubriand: to accept the Duc de Bordeaux would

certainly be the best thing to do. I fear only that events will prove

more than a match for us."

"More than a match for us, Monseigneur? Are you not invested with full

powers? Let us go to join Henry V.; summon the Chambers and the army to

your side, outside Paris. The mere noise of your departure will cause

all this effervescence to subside, and men will seek a shelter under

your enlightened and protective power."

While speaking, I watched Philip. My advice put him ill at ease; I read

on his face his desire to be King:

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said, without looking at me, "the thing

is more difficult than you think; it won't go like that. You do not

know the danger in which we stand. A furious band might indulge in

the most violent excesses against the Chambers, and we have no one to

defend us." This phrase which M. le Duc d'Orléans let fall pleased me,

because it supplied me with a peremptory retort:

[Sidenote: My conversation with the Duke.]

"I can conceive that difficulty, Monseigneur, but there is a sure means

of removing it. If you do not think that you can join Henry V., as I

was suggesting, you can adopt another course. The session is about to

open: whatever proposal the Deputies may make first, declare that the

present Chamber does not possess the necessary powers (which is the

sheer truth) to dispose of the form of government; say that France

must be consulted and a new assembly elected with powers _ad hoc_

to decide so important a question. Your Royal Highness will then be

placing yourself in the most popular position; the Republican Party,

which at this moment constitutes your danger, will extol you to the

skies. In the two months that will elapse before the meeting of the new

legislature, you will organize the National Guard; all your friends and

the friends of the young King will work for you in the provinces. Then

let the Deputies come, let the cause which I am defending be publicly

pleaded in the tribune. This cause, secretly favoured by yourself, will

obtain an immense majority of votes. The moment of anarchy will have

passed, and you will have nothing more to fear from the violence of the

Republicans. I do not even see that you will have much difficulty in

winning General La Fayette and M. Laffitte to your side. What a fine

part for you to play, Monseigneur! You can reign for fifteen years in

the name of your ward; in fifteen years, the age of rest will have

set in for all of us; you will have had the glory, unique in history,

of being able to ascend the throne and of leaving it to the lawful

heir; at the same time, you will have brought up that child in the

enlightenment of the century and you will have made him capable of

reigning over France: one of your daughters might one day wield the

sceptre with him."

Philip cast his looks vaguely above his head:

"Excuse me, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said; "I left an important

deputation to come to talk with you, and I must go back to it. Madame

la Duchesse d'Orléans will have told you how happy I should be to do

what you might wish; but, believe me, it is I alone who am holding back

a threatening crowd. If the Royalist Party is not massacred, it owes

its life to my efforts."

"Monseigneur," I replied to this statement, so unexpected and so far

removed from the subject of our conversation, "I have seen massacres:

men who have gone through the Revolution are seasoned. Old soldiers

do not allow themselves to be frightened by objects that terrify

conscripts."

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

"Well?" they exclaimed.

"Well, he wants to be King."

"And Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans?"

"She wants to be Queen."

"What did they say to you?"

"One spoke to me of pastorals, the other of the dangers threatening

France and of 'poor Caroline's' frivolity; both were good enough to

convey to me that I might be of use to them, and neither of them looked

me in the face."

Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans wished to see me once more. M. le Duc

d'Orléans did not come to take part in this conversation. Madame la

Duchesse d'Orléans explained herself more clearly on the favours with

which Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans proposed to honour me. She was good

enough to remind me of what she called my power over public opinion, of

the sacrifices which I had made, of the aversion which Charles X. and

his family had always shown me, in spite of my services. She told me

that, if I wished to go back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H.R.H.

would be most pleased to reinstate me in that office; but that perhaps

I would prefer to return to Rome, and that she (Madame la Duchesse

d'Orléans) would see me take this last course with an extreme pleasure,

in the interests of our holy religion.

"Madame," I replied at once, with a certain animation, "I see that

Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans' mind is made up, that he has weighed the

consequences, that he foresees the years of misery and of various

dangers which he will have to pass; I have therefore no more to say.

I have not come here to show any lack of respect to the blood of the

Bourbons; I owe, besides, nothing but gratitude to Madame's kindness.

Leaving on one side, therefore, the main objections, the reasons drawn

from principles and events, I beseech Your Royal Highness to consent to

listen to what regards myself. You have been good enough to speak to

me of what you call my power over public opinion. Well, if this power

is real, it is founded only on public esteem; and I should lose this

esteem the moment I changed my flag. Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans would

think he was gaining support, whereas he would have in his service only

a wretched phrase-maker, a perjurer to whose voice none would hearken,

a renegade at whom every one would have the right to fling mud and

to spit in his face. To the wavering words which he would stammer in

favour of Louis-Philippe, they would oppose whole volumes which he had

published in favour of the fallen family. Was it not I, Madame, who

wrote the pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, the articles on the

_Arrivée de Louis XVIII. à Compiègne_, the _Rapport dans le conseil du

roi à Gand_, the _Histoire de la vie et de la mort de M. le duc de

Berry?_ I doubt if I have written a single page in which the name of my

ancient kings does not appear in some connection and in which it is not

surrounded with protestations of my love and fidelity: a matter which

bears a character of individual attachment the more remarkable inasmuch

as Madame knows that I do not believe in kings. At the mere thought of

a desertion, the blushes rise to my face; I would go the next day to

throw myself into the Seine. I entreat Madame to excuse the animation

of my words; I am penetrated with your kindness; I will keep it in

profound and grateful remembrance, but you would not wish to dishonour

me: pity me, Madame, pity me!"

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle D'Orléans.]

I had remained standing and, bowing, I withdrew. Mademoiselle d'Orléans

had not uttered a word. She rose and, as she left the room, said to me:

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

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

were spoken.

That was my last political temptation; I might have thought myself

a just man according to St. Hilary[314], who declares that men are

exposed to the attempts of the devil in proportion to their godliness:

_Victoria ei est magis, exacta de sanctis._ My refusals were those of

a dupe: where is the public that shall judge them? Could I not have

taken my place among the men, virtuous sons of the land, who serve the

"country" before all things? Unfortunately, I am not a creature of

the present and I am not willing to capitulate with fortune. I have

nothing in common with Cicero; but his frailty is no excuse: posterity

has declined to forgive one great man his moment of weakness for

another great man; what would my poor life have been, losing its only

possession, its integrity, for Louis-Philippe d'Orléans?

On the evening of the day on which I had this last conversation at the

Palais-Royal, I met M. de Sainte-Aulaire[315] at Madame Récamier's. I

did not amuse myself by asking him his secret, but he asked me mine. He

had just arrived from the country full of the events of which he had

read:

"Ah," he cried, "how glad I am to see you! Here's a fine business! I

hope that all of us, at the Luxembourg, will do our duty. It would be a

curious thing for the Peers to dispose of the crown of Henry IV.! I am

quite sure that you will not leave me alone in the tribune."

As my mind was made up, I was very calm; my reply appeared cold to M.

de Sainte-Aulaire's ardour. He went away, saw his friends and left me

alone in the tribune: long live your light-hearted and frivolous men of

intelligence!

The Republican Party was still struggling under the feet of the friends

who had betrayed it. On the 6th of August, a deputation of twenty

members appointed by the central committee of the twelve wards of Paris

appeared in the Chamber of Deputies to present an address of which

General Thiard[316] and M. Duris-Dufresne[317] eased the well-meaning

deputation. It was said in this address that "the nation could not

recognise as a constitutional power either an elective Chamber

appointed during the existence and under the influence of the royalty

which it has overthrown or an aristocratic Chamber, the institution of

which is in direct opposition to the principles that have caused it,

the nation, to take up arms; that the central committee of the twelve

wards, having granted, as a revolutionary necessity, only a _de facto_

and very provisional power to the present Chamber of Deputies to

discuss any measure of urgency, now calls with all its wishes for the

free and popular election of mandatories who shall really represent the

needs of the people; that the primary assemblies alone can bring about

that result. If it were otherwise, the nation would render null and

void all that might tend to impede it in the exercise of its rights."

All this was pure reason; but the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom was

aspiring to the crown, and the fearful and ambitious were in a hurry

to give it to him. The plebeians of to-day wanted a revolution and did

not know how to make it; the Jacobins, whom they have taken for their

models, would have flung the men of the Palais-Royal and the praters

of the two Chambers into the water. M. de La Fayette was reduced to

impotent wishes: pleased at having caused the revival of the National

Guard, he allowed himself to be tossed like an old swaddling-band by

Philip, whose wet-nurse he imagined himself to be; he grew torpid with

this felicity. The old general was no more than liberty fallen asleep,

as the Republic of 1793 was no more than a death's-head.

The truth is that a truncated Chamber, with no special mandate, had no

right whatever to dispose of the crown: it was a Convention expressly

called together, formed of the House of Lords and a newly-elected

House of Commons, that disposed of the throne of James II. It is also

certain that that rump of the Chamber of Deputies, those 221, imbued

under Charles X. with the traditions of the hereditary monarchy,

brought no disposition fitted to the elective monarchy; they stopped

it at its commencement, and forced it to go back to principles of

quasi-legitimism. They who forged the sword of the new royalty

introduced into the blade a straw which sooner or later will cause it

to spring.

[Sidenote: The seventh of August.]

The 7th of August is a memorable day for me; it is the day on which

I had the happiness of ending my political career as I had begun it:

a happiness rare enough to-day to give reason for rejoicing in it.

The declaration of the Chamber of Deputies concerning the vacancy of

the throne had been brought to the Chamber of Peers. I went to take

my seat, which, was in the highest row of arm-chairs, facing the

President. The Peers seemed to me at once busy and depressed. If some

bore on their foreheads the pride of their approaching disloyalty,

others bore the shame of a remorse to which they lacked the courage to

listen. I said to myself, as I watched this sad assembly:

"What! Are they who received the favours of Charles X. in his

prosperity going to desert him in his ill-fortune? Will they whose

special mission it was to defend the Hereditary Throne, those men of

the Court who lived in the King's intimacy, will they betray him?

They kept watch at his door at Saint-Cloud; they embraced him at

Rambouillet; he clasped their hands in a last farewell: are they going

to raise against him those hands, still warm with that last pressure?

Is this Chamber, which for fifteen years has resounded with their

protestations of devotion, about to hear their perjury? And yet it was

for them that Charles X. ruined himself; it was they who drove him

towards the Ordinances: they stamped for joy when these appeared and

when they thought that they had won in that moment of silence which

precedes the fall of the thunder."

These ideas rolled confusedly and sorrowfully through my mind. The

peerage had become the triple receptacle of the corruptions of the

old Monarchy, the Republic and the Empire. As for the Republicans of

1793, now transformed into senators, and the generals of Bonaparte,

I expected of them only what they have always done: they deposed the

extraordinary man to whom they owed all, they were going to depose the

King who had confirmed them in the benefits and honours with which

their first master had loaded them. Let the wind turn, and they will

depose the usurper to whom they were preparing to throw the crown.

I ascended the tribune. A deep silence fell: the faces of the peers

seemed embarrassed; they all turned sidewards in their arm-chairs and

looked down at the floor. With the exception of a few peers who had

resolved to retire like myself, none dared to raise his eyes to the

level of the tribune.

[Sidenote: My last speech in the Peers.]

I reproduce my speech because it sums up my life and forms my principal

title to the esteem of posterity:

"Gentlemen!

"The declaration which has been brought to this Chamber is to

me much less complicated than it appears to those of my noble

colleagues who profess an opinion different from mine. There is

one fact in this declaration which appears to me to govern all

the others, or rather to destroy them. Were we under a regular

order of things, I should doubtless carefully examine the various

changes which it is proposed to make in the Charter. Many of these

changes have been proposed by myself. I am surprised only that

the reactionary measure regarding the peers created by Charles X.

should have been proposed to this Chamber. I shall not be suspected

of any fondness for the system by which these 'batches' were

created; and you know that, when threatened with them, I combated

the very menace: but to make ourselves the judges of our colleagues

and to erase whom we please from the list of the peerage, whenever

we find ourselves the stronger party, would seem to me to savour

of proscription. Do they want to destroy the peerage? Be it so: it

better becomes us to surrender our existence than to beg for our

lives.

"I reproach myself already for the few words I have uttered on a

point which, important as it is, becomes insignificant when merged

in the great proposition before us. France is without a guide; and

I am now to consider what must be added to or cut away from the

masts of a vessel which has lost its rudder! I lay aside, then,

whatever is of a secondary interest in the declaration of the

Elective Chamber; and, fixing on the single enunciated fact of

the vacancy of the throne, whether true or pretended, I advance

directly to my object.

"But a previous question ought first to be attended to: if the

throne be vacant, we are free to choose the future form of our

government.

"Before offering the crown to any individual whatever, it is well

to ascertain under what political system the social body is to be

constituted. Are we to establish a republic or a new monarchy?

"Does a republic or a new monarchy offer sufficient guarantees to

France of strength, durability and repose?

"A republic would first of all have the recollections of the

republic itself to contend with. Those recollections are far from

being effaced. The time is not yet forgotten when Death made

his frightful progress among us, with Liberty and Equality for

supporters. If you were plunged again into anarchy, how would you

reanimate the Hercules on his rock who alone was able to stifle the

monster? In the course of a thousand years, your posterity may see

another Napoleon. As for you, you must not expect it.

"Next, in the present state of our manners and of our relations

with surrounding governments, the idea of a republic seems to me

to be untenable. The first difficulty would be to bring the people

of France to an unanimous vote on the subject. What right has

the population of Paris to compel the population of Marseilles

or any other town to adopt the forms of a republic? Is there to

be but one republic, or are we to have twenty or thirty? And

are they to be federative or independent? Let us suppose these

obstacles to be removed. Let us suppose that there is to be but

one republic: can you imagine for a moment, with the habitual

familiarity of our manners, that a president, however grave,

however talented and however respectable he may be, could remain

for a year at the head of the government, without being tempted

to retire from it? Ill-protected by the laws and unsupported by

previous recollections, insulted and vilified, morning, noon

and night, by secret rivals and by the agents of faction, he

would not inspire the confidence which property and commerce

require; he would possess neither becoming dignity, in treating

with foreign governments, nor the power which is indispensable

to the maintenance of internal tranquillity. If he resorted to

revolutionary measures, the republic would become odious; all

Europe would become disturbed and would avail itself of our

divisions, first, to foment them and, afterwards, to interfere in

the quarrel; and we should again be involved in an interminable

struggle. A representative republic is, no doubt, to be the future

condition of the world; but its time has not yet come.

"I proceed to the question of a monarchy.

"A king named by the Chambers, or elected by the people, whatever

may be done, will always be a novelty. Now I take it for granted

that liberty is sought for, especially the liberty of the press,

by which and for which the people have obtained so brilliant

a triumph. Well, every new monarchy will, sooner or later, be

compelled to gag this liberty. Could Napoleon himself admit

of it? The offspring of our misfortunes and the slave of our

glory, the liberty of the press can exist, in security, only

under a government whose roots are deeply seated. A monarchy,

the illegitimate offspring of one bloody night, must always have

something to fear from the independent expression of public

opinion. While this man proclaims republican opinions, and that

some other system, is it not to be feared that laws of exception

must soon be resorted to, in spite of the anathema against the

censorship which has been added to Article VIII. of the Charter?

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"What, then, O friends of regulated liberty, have you gained by the

change which is now proposed to you? You must sink, of necessity,

either into a republic or into a system of legal slavery. The

monarch will be surrounded and overwhelmed by factions, or the

monarchy itself swept away by a torrent of democratical enactments.

"In the first intoxication of success, we suppose that everything

is easy; we hope to satisfy every exigency, every interest,

every humour; we flatter ourselves that every one will lay aside

his personal views and vanities; we believe that the superior

intelligence and the wisdom of the government will surmount

innumerable difficulties; but, at the end of a few months, we find

that all our theories have been belied by practice.

"I present to you, gentlemen, only a few of the inconveniences

attaching to the formation of a republic or of a new monarchy. If

either have its perils, there remained a third course, and one

which well deserved a moment's consideration.

"The crown has been trampled on by horrible ministers, who have

supported, by murder, their violation of the law; they have trifled

with oaths made to Heaven and with laws sworn to on earth.

"Foreigners, who have twice entered Paris without resistance,

learn the true cause of your success: you presented yourselves

in the name of legal authority. If you were to fly to-day to the

assistance of tyranny, do you think that the gates of the capital,

of the civilized world, would open as readily before you? The

French nation has grown, since your departure, under the influence

of constitutional laws; our children of fourteen are giants; our

conscripts at Algiers, our schoolboys in Paris have shown you that

they are the sons of the conquerors of! Austerlitz, Marengo and

Jena: but sons strengthened by all that liberty adds to glory.

"Never was a defense more just and more heroic than that of the

people of Paris. They did not rise against the law: so long as the

social compact was respected, the people remained peaceable; they

bore insults, provocations and threats, without complaining; their

property and their blood were the price they owed for the Charter:

both have been lavished in abundance.

"But when, after a system of falsehood pursued to the last moment,

slavery was suddenly proclaimed; when the conspiracy of folly and

hypocrisy burst forth unawares; when the panic of the palace,

organized by eunuchs, was prepared as a substitute for the terror

of the republic and the iron yoke of the empire, then it was

that the people armed themselves with their courage and their

intelligence. It was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe

freely amid the smoke of gunpowder and that it required more than

'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not

have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three

last suns that have shone over France. A great crime was committed;

it produced the violent explosion of a powerful principle: was it

necessary, on account of this crime and the moral and political

triumph that resulted from it, to overthrow the established order

of things? Let us examine.

"Charles X. and his son have forfeited, or abdicated, the throne,

understand it which way you will; but the throne is not vacant:

after them came a child, whose innocence ought not to be condemned.

"What blood now rises against him? Will you venture to say that

it is that of his father? This orphan, educated in the schools of

his country, in the love of a constitutional government and with

the ideas of the age, would have become a king well suited to our

future wants. The guardian of his youth should have been made

to swear to the declaration on which you are about to vote; on

attaining his majority, the young Monarch would have renewed his

oath. In the meantime, the present King, the actual King would have

been M. le Duc d'Orléans, the regent of the kingdom, a Prince who

has lived among the people and who knows, that a monarchy, to-day

can only exist by consent and reason. This natural arrangement, as

it appears to me, would have united the means of reconciliation

and would perhaps have saved France those agitations which are the

consequence of all violent changes in a State.

"To say that this child, when separated from his masters, would

not have had time to forget their very names, before arriving

at manhood; to say that he would remain infatuated with certain

hereditary dogmas, after a long course of popular education, after

the terrible lesson which, in two nights, has hurled two kings from

the throne, is, at least, not very reasonable.

"It is not from a feeling of sentimental devotion, nor from a

nurse-like affection, transmitted from the swaddling-clothes of

Henry IV. to the cradle of the young Henry, that I plead a cause

where everything would again turn against me anew if it triumphed.

I am not aiming at romance, or chivalry, or martyrdom; I do not

believe in the right divine of royalty; but I do believe in the

power of facts and of revolutions. I do not even invoke the

Charter: I take my ideas from a higher source; I draw them from the

sphere of philosophy of the period at which my life terminates: I

propose the Duke of Bordeaux merely as a necessity of a purer kind

than that which is now in question.

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"I know that, by passing over this child, it is intended to

establish the principle of the sovereignty of the people: an

absurdity of the old school, which proves that our veteran

Democrats have advanced no further in political knowledge than our

superannuated Royalists. There is no absolute sovereignty anywhere;

liberty does not flow from political right, as was supposed in the

eighteenth century; it is derived from natural right, so that it

exists under all forms of government; and a monarchy may be free,

nay, much more free than a republic: but this is neither the time

nor the place to deliver a political lecture.

"I shall content myself with observing that, when the people

dispose of thrones, they often dispose also of their own liberty; I

shall remark that the principle of an hereditary monarchy, however

absurd it may at first appear, has been recognised, in practice, as

preferable to that of an elective monarchy. The reasons for this

are so obvious that I need not enlarge upon them. You choose one

king to-day: who shall hinder you from choosing another to-morrow?

The law, you say. The law? And it is you who make it!

"There is still a simpler mode of treating the question: it is

to say, we repudiate the Elder Branch of the Bourbons. And why?

Because we are victorious; we have triumphed in a just and holy

cause; we use a double right of conquest.

"Very well: you proclaim the sovereignty of might. The take good

care of this might; for if, in a few months, escapes from you, you

will be in a bad position to complain. Such is human nature! The

most enlightened and the purest minds do not always rise above

success. Those minds were the first to invoke right in opposition

to violence; they supported that right with all the superiority

of their talent; and, at the very moment when the truth of what

they said has been demonstrated by the most abominable abuse of

force and by its signal overthrow, the conquerors recur to those

arms they have broken! They will find them to be dangerous weapons,

which will wound their own hands without serving their cause.

"I have carried the war into my enemies' camp; I have not gone to

bivouac in the past under the old banner of the dead, a banner

which has not been inglorious, but which droops by the flag-staff

that supports it, because no breath of life is there to raise it.

Were I to move the dust of thirty-five Capets, I should not draw

from it an argument which should be as much as listened to. The

idolatry of a name is abolished; monarchy is no longer a tenet of

religious belief: it is a political form which is preferable at

this moment to every other, because it has the greatest tendency to

reconcile order with liberty.

"Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the

country[318] with my disregarded warnings! It only remains for me

to sit down on the last fragment of the shipwreck which I have so

often foretold. In misfortune I acknowledge every species of power

except that of absolving me from my oaths of allegiance. It is also

my duty to make my life uniform: after all that I have done, said

and written for the Bourbons, I should be the meanest of wretches

if I denied them at the moment when, for the third and last time,

they are on the road to exile.

"Fear I leave to those generous royalists who have never sacrificed

a coin or a place to their loyalty; to those champions of the Altar

and the Throne who lately treated me as a renegade, an apostate

and a revolutionary. Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon

you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him

for the unfortunate master who loaded you with his gifts and whom

you have ruined! Instigators of _coups d'État_, preachers of

constituent power, where are you? You hide yourselves in the mire

from under which you gallantly raised your heads to calumniate the

faithful servants of the King; your silence to-day is worthy of

your language of yesterday. Let all those doughty knights, whose

projected exploits have caused the descendants of Henry IV. to be

driven from their throne at the point of the pitchfork, tremble now

as they crouch under the three-coloured cockade: it is natural

that they should do so. The noble colours which they display will

protect their persons, but will not cover their cowardice.

"In thus frankly expressing my sentiments in this tribune, I have

no idea that I am performing an act of heroism. Those times are

past when opinions were expressed at personal hazard: if such were

now the case, I should speak a hundred times louder. The best

buckler is a breast that does not fear to show itself uncovered

to the enemy. No, gentlemen, we need neither fear a people whose

reason is equal to its courage, nor that generous rising generation

which I admire, with which I sympathize with all the faculties of

my soul, and to which, as to my country, I wish honour, glory and

liberty.

"Far from me, above all things, be the thought of sowing seeds of

discord in France, and that has been my motive for excluding from

my speech every accent of passion. If I could convince myself that

a child should be left in the happy ranks of obscurity in order to

procure the peace of thirty-three millions of men, I should have

regarded every word as criminal which was not consistent with the

needs of the time: but I am not so convinced. Had I the disposal

of a crown, I would willingly lay it at the feet of M. le Duc

d'Orléans. But all that I see vacant is, not a throne, but a tomb

at Saint-Denis.

"Whatever destiny may await M. the Lieutenant-general of the

Kingdom, I shall never be his enemy, if he promotes my country's

welfare. I only ask to retain my liberty of conscience and the

right of going to die where I shall find independence and repose.

"I vote against the declaration."

I was fairly calm when I began my speech, but gradually I was overcome

with emotion. When I came to this passage: "Useless Cassandra, how

often have I wearied the Throne and the country with my disregarded

warnings," my voice became troubled, and I was obliged to put my

handkerchief to my eyes to keep back tears of love and bitterness.

Indignation restored my power of speech in the paragraph that follows:

"Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and

stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master

who loaded, you with his gifts and whom you have ruined!"

[Sidenote: Its effect on the Peers.]

I turned my glances upon the benches to which I addressed those words.

Several peers seemed crushed; they sank down in their arm-chairs till

I could no longer see them behind their colleagues seated motionless

before them. This speech made some noise: all parties were hurt in it,

but all remained silent, because, by the side of great truths, I had

placed a great sacrifice. I came down from the tribune; I left the

Chamber, went to the cloak-room, took off my peer's coat, my sword, my

feathered hat; I unfastened from the last the white cockade and placed

it in the little pocket on the left-hand side of the black frock-coat

which I put on and buttoned across my heart. My servant carried away

the cast-off clothes of the peerage, and I, shaking the dust from my

feet, quitted that palace of treachery, which I shall never enter again

in my life.

On the 10th and 12th of August, I completed my self-divestment and sent

in the different resignations that follow:

"PARIS, 10 _August_ 1830.

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

"Being unable to take the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe

d'Orléans as King of the French, I find myself seized with a legal

incapacity which prevents me from attending the sittings of the

Hereditary Chamber. One mark of the kindness of King Louis XVIII.

and of the royal munificence remains to me: a peer's pension of

twelve thousand francs, which was given me to keep up, if not

brilliantly, at least independently of immediate needs, the high

position to which I was called. It would not be right that I should

retain a favour attached to the exercise of functions which I am

not able to fulfil. I therefore have the honour to resign into your

hands my pension as a peer."

"Paris, 12 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DES FINANCES[320],

"There remains to me, from the kindness of Louis XVII I. and the

national munificence, a peer's pension of twelve thousand francs,

transformed into an annuity inscribed on the ledger of the public

debt and transmissible only to the first direct generation of the

annuitant. Not being able to take the oath to Monseigneur le Duc

d'Orléans as King of the French, it would not be right that I

should continue to receive a pension attached to functions which I

no longer exercise.

"I therefore write to resign it into your hands: it will have

ceased to accrue to me on the day (10 August) when I wrote to M.

the President of the Chamber of Peers that it would be impossible

for me to take the oath required.

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

"PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.

[Sidenote: I resign pension and place.]

"MONSIEUR LE GRAND RÉFÉRENDAIRE[321],

"I have the honour to send you a copy of the two letters which I

have addressed, one to M. the President of the Chamber of Peers,

the other to M. the Minister of Finance. You will there see that I

renounce my peer's pension and that consequently my attorney will

have to receive of this pension only the sum due to the 10th of

August, the day on which I declared my refusal to take the oath.

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

"PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE LA JUSTICE[322],

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

"I am, with high regard,

"Monsieur le ministre de la justice,

"Your most humble and most obedient servant."

I remained as naked as a little St. John; but I had long been

accustomed to live on wild honey, and I did not fear that the daughter

of Herodias would have a longing for my grey head.

My gold-lace, tassels, bullioned fringe and epaulettes, sold to a Jew

and melted down by him, brought me in seven hundred francs, the net

produce of all my grandeurs.

And now, what had become of Charles X.? He was travelling towards

his exile, accompanied by his Bodyguards, watched over by his three

commissaries, passing through France without exciting even the

curiosity of the peasants ploughing their furrows beside the high-road.

In two or three small towns, hostile movements were made; in some

others, townsmen and women showed signs of pity. It must be remembered

that Bonaparte roused no more commotion when going from Fontainebleau

to Toulon, that France grew no more excited and that the winner of so

many battles narrowly escaped death at Orgon. In this tired country,

the greatest events are no longer more than dramas played for our

diversion: they interest the spectator so long as the curtain is raised

and, when it falls, leave but a vain memory. Sometimes Charles X. and

his family stopped at wretched carters' rests to take a meal at a

corner of a dirty table where wagoners had dined before him. Henry V.

and his sister amused themselves in the yard by watching the chickens

and pigeons of the inn. I had said it: the Monarchy was going away, and

people stood at their windows to see it pass.

Heaven at that moment was pleased to insult both the victorious and the

vanquished party. While it was being maintained that "all France" was

indignant at the Ordinances, King Philip was in frequent receipt of

provincial addresses sent to King Charles to congratulate the latter

"on the salutary measures which he had taken and which were saving the

monarchy."

The Bey of Titteria, on his side, sent the following act of submission

to the dethroned monarch, who was at that time on the road to Cherbourg:

"In the name of God, etc., etc., I recognise as my lord and

absolute sovereign great Charles X., the victorious; I will pay him

tribute, etc."

It is not easy to imagine a more bitter mockery of both fortunes.

Nowadays, revolutions are manufactured by machinery; they are made so

fast that a sovereign, while still king on the frontiers of his States,

is already no more than an exile in his capital.

This indifference of the country for Charles X. points to something

more than lassitude: we are bound to behold in it the progress of

democratic ideas and the assimilation of ranks. At an earlier period,

the fall of a king of France would have been an enormous event: time

has lowered the monarch from the height on which he was placed, has

brought him nearer to us, has diminished the space which separated him

from the class of the people. If men felt little surprise at meeting

the son of St. Louis on the high-road like everybody else, this was due

not to a spirit of hatred or system, but quite simply to the sense of

social levelling which has penetrated men's minds and which has acted

upon the masses without their knowing it.

[Sidenote: Charles X. at Cherbourg.]

A curse, Cherbourg, upon thy ill-omened precincts! It was near

Cherbourg that the wind of anger threw Edward III. to ravage our

country[323]; it was not far from Cherbourg that the wind of an

enemy's victory shattered Tourville's fleet[324]; it was at Cherbourg

that the wind of a deceptive prosperity drove Louis XVI. toward his

scaffold[325]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind from I know not what

shore carried away our last Princes. The coast of Great Britain, on

which William the Conqueror[326] landed, witnessed the disembarkation

of Charles the Tenth without lance or pennon: he went to Holyrood to

find the memories of his youth[327] hung upon the walls of the Stuart

palace like old engravings made yellow by time.

I have depicted the Three Days as they unrolled themselves before my

eyes: hence a certain contemporary colour, true at the passing moment,

false after the moment has passed, is diffused over my picture. There

is no revolution so prodigious but, described from minute to minute,

will find itself reduced to the slightest proportions. Events issue

from the womb of things, even as men from the womb of their mothers,

accompanied by the infirmities of nature. Misery and greatness are

twin sisters: they are born together; but where the confinement is a

vigorous one, misery at a certain period dies, and greatness alone

survives. To judge impartially of the truth that is to remain, we must

therefore place ourselves at the point of view from which posterity

will contemplate the accomplished fact.

Getting away from the meannesses of character and action of which I had

been a witness, taking only what will remain of the Days of July, I

said with justice in my speech in the Chamber of Peers:

"The people having armed themselves with their courage and their

intelligence, it was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe

freely amidst the smoke of gunpowder, and that it required rather more

than 'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not

have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three last

suns that have shone over France."

In fact, the people properly so-called were brave and generous on the

day of the 28th. The Guards had lost more than 300 men killed and

wounded; they did ample justice to the poor classes, who alone fought

on that day and among whom were mingled men who were foul-minded,

but who were unable to dishonour them. The pupils of the Polytechnic

School, who left their school too late on the 28th to take part in the

fighting, were placed by the people at their head on the 29th with

admirable simplicity and ingenuousness.

Champions who had been absent from the strife sustained by the people

came to join their ranks on the 29th, when the greatest danger was

past; others, likewise victors, first joined the conquering side on the

30th and 31st.

On the side of the troops, things were very much the same; only the

soldiers and officers were engaged: the staff, which had once deserted

Bonaparte at Fontainebleau, kept to the heights of Saint-Cloud,

watching from which side the wind blew the smoke of the powder. They

pressed on each other's heels at Charles X.'s levee; not a soul was

present at his couchee.

The moderation of the plebeian classes equalled their courage; order

resulted suddenly from confusion. One must have seen the half-naked

workmen, posted on sentry at the gate of the public gardens, preventing

other ragged workmen from passing, to form an idea of the power of duty

which had seized upon the men who remained the masters. They could

have paid themselves the price of their blood and allowed themselves

to be tempted by their wretchedness. One did not, as on the 10th of

August 1792, see the Swiss massacred in their flight. All opinions were

respected; never, with a few exceptions, was victory less abused. The

victors carried the wounded Guards through the crowd, crying:

"Respect brave men!"

If a soldier came to die, they said:

"Peace to the dead!"

The fifteen years of the Restoration, under a constitutional

government, had given rise among us to that spirit of humanity,

lawfulness and justice which twenty-five years of the revolutionary and

warlike spirit had been unable to produce. The law of force introduced

into our manners seemed to have become the common law.

The consequences of the Revolution of July will be memorable. This

Revolution has pronounced a decree against all thrones: to-day, kings

will be able to reign only by force of arms; a sure means for a moment,

but incapable of enduring: the time of successive janissaries is ended.

[Sidenote: Thoughts on the Three Days.]

Neither Tacitus nor Thucydides could give us a good description of the

events of the Three Days; it would need Bossuet to explain to us the

events in the order of Providence: a genius that saw all, but without

overstepping the limits set to its reason and its splendour, like the

sun which moves between two dazzling boundaries and which the Orientals

call the "Slave of God."

Let us not seek so near at hand the motive powers of a movement placed

so far away; the mediocrity of mankind, mad terrors, inexplicable

disagreements, hatreds, ambitions, the presumption of some, the

prejudice of others, secret conspiracies, buying and selling, well or

ill-advised measures, courage or the absence of courage: all these

things are the accidents, not the causes, of the event. When people say

that they no longer wanted the Bourbons, that these had become hateful

because they were supposed to have been forced upon France by the

foreigner, this lofty disgust explains nothing satisfactorily.

The movement of July has not to do with politics properly so-called:

it has to do with the social revolution which is never idle. By the

concatenation of this general revolution, the 28th of July 1830 is

only the inevitable sequel of the 21st of January 1793. The work

of our first deliberative assemblies had been suspended; it had

not been finished. In the course of twenty years, the French had

accustomed themselves, like the English under Cromwell, to be governed

by other masters than their old sovereigns. The fall of Charles X.

is the consequence of the decapitation of Louis XVI., even as the

dethronement of James II. is the consequence of the murder of Charles

I. The Revolution seemed to die away in the glory of Bonaparte and in

the liberties of Louis XVIII., but its germ was not destroyed: lodged

at the bottom of our manners, it developed when the faults of the

Restoration gave it fresh heat, and soon it burst forth.

The counsels of Providence are revealed in the anti-monarchical changes

that are taking place. That superficial minds should see merely a

scuffle in the Revolution of the Three Days is quite simple; but

reflective men know that an enormous step forward has been taken:

the principle of the sovereignty of the people has been substituted

for the principle of the royal sovereignty, the hereditary monarchy

changed into an elective monarchy. The 21st of January taught that one

could dispose of a king's head; the 29th of July has shown that one

can dispose of a crown. Now, any truth, good or bad, which manifests

itself, remains the acquisition of the crowd. A change ceases to

be unheard of, or extraordinary; it no longer presents itself to

the mind or the conscience as impious, when it results from an idea

that has become popular. The Franks used to exercise the sovereignty

collectively; next they delegated it to a few chiefs; then those

chiefs confided it to one alone; then this sole chief usurped it for

the benefit of his family. Now men are going back from the hereditary

royalty to the elective royalty, and from the elective royalty they

will glide into the republic. That is the history of society; these are

the stages by which the government comes from the people and returns to

it.

Let us, then, not believe that the work of July is a superfetation of a

day; let us not imagine that Legitimacy is going to come incontinently

to re-establish succession by right of primogeniture: let us neither

try to persuade ourselves that July will suddenly die a natural death.

No doubt, the Orleans Branch will not take root: it is not to produce

that result that so much blood, calamity and genius has been expended

during the last half-century! But July, if it do not bring about the

final destruction of France with the ruin of all her liberties, will

bear its natural fruit: that fruit is democracy. The fruit will perhaps

be bitter and blood-red; but the Monarchy is an outlandish graft, which

will not take on a republican stem.

And so let us not confound the improvised King with the Revolution from

which he sprang by chance: the latter, such as we see it, is acting in

contradiction with its principles; it seems to have been born without

the power to live, because it is punished with a throne: but let it

only drag on a few years, this Revolution, and what will have come and

gone will change the data that remain to be known. Grown-up men die, or

no longer see things as they used to see them; adolescents attain the

age of reason; new generations recruit corrupt generations; the linen

soaked in the sores of a hospital, when met by a great stream, soils

only the water that flows below those corruptions: down stream and up

stream, the current keeps or resumes its limpidity.

[Sidenote: The monarchy of July.]

July, free in its origin, produced only a fettered monarchy; but

the time will come when, rid of its crown, it will undergo the

transformations which are the law of existences; then it will live in

an atmosphere befitting its nature.

The errors of the Republican Party, the illusions of the Legitimist

Party are both deplorable and go beyond democracy and royalty: the

first thinks that violence is the only means of success; the second

thinks that the past is the only harbour of safety. Now, there is a

moral law which rules society, a general legitimacy which dominates the

particular legitimacy. This great law and this great legitimacy are the

enjoyment of the natural rights of man, ruled by his duties; for it is

the duty that creates the right, and not the right that creates the

duty; the passions and the vices relegate us to the class of slaves.

The general legitimacy would have had no obstacle to overcome, if it

had kept, as belonging to the same principle, the particular legitimacy.

For the rest, one observation will suffice to make us understand the

prodigious and majestic might of the family of our old sovereigns; I

have already said it and can not repeat it too often: all the royalties

will die with the French Royalty.

In fact, the monarchical idea is wanting at the very moment when the

monarch is wanting; we find nothing left around us but the democratic

idea. My young King will carry away in his arms the monarchy of the

world. It is a good ending.

When I was writing all this on what the Revolution of 1830 might be in

the future, I had a difficulty in defending myself against an instinct

which spoke to me in contradiction to my argument. I took this instinct

for the impulse of my dislike of the troubles of 1830; I distrusted

myself and, perhaps, in my too loyal impartiality, I exaggerated the

future which the Three Days might bring forth. Well, ten years have

passed since the fall of Charles X.: has July sat down? We are now at

the commencement of December 1840: to what a depth has France sunk!

If I could find any pleasure in the humiliation of a government of

French origin, I should experience a sort of pride in re-reading, in

the _Congrès de Vérone_, my correspondence with Mr. Canning: certainly

it differs from that which has just been communicated to the Chamber

of Deputies. Whose is the fault? Is it that of the elected Prince? Is

it that of the incapacity of his ministers? Is it that of the nation

itself, whose character and genius seem to be exhausted? Our ideas

are progressive; but do our manners support them? It would not be

surprising if a people which has existed fourteen centuries and which

has ended that long career with an explosion of miracles should have

come to an end. If you read these Memoirs to their conclusion, you will

see that, while doing justice to all that has seemed fine to me in

the various epochs of our history, I am of opinion that, in the last

result, the old society is coming to an end[328].

Here ends my political career. This career ought also to close my

Memoirs, since nothing is left for me but to sum up the experiences of

my course. Three catastrophes have marked the three preceding parts

of my life: I saw Louis XVI. die during my career as a traveller and

a soldier; at the end of my political career, Bonaparte disappeared;

Charles X., in falling, closed my political career.

I have fixed the period of a revolution in literature, and, in the same

way, in politics, I have formulated the principles of representative

government: my diplomatic correspondence is worth quite as much, I

think, as my literary compositions. It is possible that both are worth

nothing at all, but it is certain that they are of equal value.

In France, in the tribune of the House of Peers and in my writings,

I exercised so great an influence that I first placed M. de Villèle

in office and that, later, he was forced to retire in the face of my

opposition, after he had made himself my enemy. All this is proved by

what you have read.

The great event of my political career is the Spanish War. It was for

me, in this career, what the _Génie du Christianisme_ had been in my

literary career. My destiny picked me out to entrust me with the

mighty venture which, under the Restoration, might have set in regular

order the world's progress towards the future. It took me out of my

dreams, and transformed me into a leader of facts. It set me down to

play at a table at which were seated, as my adversaries, the two first

ministers of the day, Prince Metternich and Mr. Canning: I won the

game against both of them. All the serious minds which the Cabinets at

that time numbered agreed that they had met a statesman in me[329].

Bonaparte had foreseen it before them, in spite of my books. I am

entitled therefore, without boasting, to believe that the politician in

me equalled the writer; but I attach no value to political renown: that

is why I have allowed myself to speak of it.

[Sidenote: End of my political career.]

If, at the time of the Peninsular Enterprise, I had not been flung

aside by deluded men, the course of our destinies would have changed:

France would have resumed her frontiers, the equilibrium of Europe

would have been re-established; the Restoration, becoming glorious,

might have lived a long time yet, and my diplomatic work would also

have marked a stage in our history. Between my two lives, there is only

a difference of result. My literary career, completely accomplished,

has produced all that it had to produce, because it depended on myself

alone. My political career was suddenly stopped in the midst of its

successes, because it depended on others.

Nevertheless, I admit that my politics were applicable only to the

Restoration. When a transformation takes place in principles, societies

and men, what was good yesterday becomes antiquated and lapsed to-day.

With regard to Spain, the relations between the Royal Families having

ceased, owing to the abolition of the Salic Law, there is no longer a

question of creating impenetrable frontiers beyond the Pyrenees; we

must accept the field of battle which Austria and England may one day

open up to us there; we must take things at the point to which they

have come and abandon, not without regret, a firm but reasonable line

of conduct, the certain benefits of which were, it is true, long-dated.

I feel conscious of having served the Legitimacy as it should be

served. I saw the future as clearly as I see it now; only I wished to

reach it by a less dangerous road, so that the Legitimacy, which was

essential to our constitutional instruction, might not stumble in a

precipitous course. To-day, my plans are no longer realizable: Russia

is going to turn elsewhere. If, as things now are, I were to enter the

Peninsula, whose spirit has had time to change, it would be with other

thoughts: I should occupy myself only with the alliance of the nations,

suspicious, jealous, passionate, uncertain and variable though it be,

and should not dream of relations between the kings. I should say to

France:

"You have left the beaten track for the path of precipices: very

well, explore its wonders and its perils. Come to us, innovations,

enterprises, discoveries! Come, and let arms, if necessary, favour you!

Where is there anything new? In the East? Let us march there! Where

can we direct our courage and our intelligence? Let us hasten thither!

Let us place ourselves at the head of the great rising of the human

race; let us not allow ourselves to be outstripped; let the French name

go before the others on this crusade, as of old it did to the Tomb of

Christ!"

Yes, if I were admitted to my country's councils, I would try to be

of use to it in the dangerous principles which it has adopted: to

restrain it at present, would mean to condemn it to a base death. I

should not be satisfied with speeches: adding works to faith, I should

prepare soldiers and millions, I should build ships, like Noe, to make

prevision for the deluge, and, if I were asked why, I should answer:

"Because such is France's good pleasure."

My dispatches would warn the Cabinets of Europe that nothing shall stir

on the globe without our intervention; that, if the world's shreds are

to be distributed, the lion's share shall fall to us. We should cease

humbly to ask our neighbours for leave to exist; the heart of France

would beat freely, no hand would dare to lay itself upon that heart to

count its throbbings; and, since we are seeking new suns, I should dart

towards their splendour and no longer await the natural rise of dawn.

God grant that these industrial interests, in which we are to find a

prosperity of a new kind, may deceive nobody, that they may prove as

fruitful, as civilizing as the moral interests whence the old society

issued! Time will teach us whether they be not the barren dreams of

those sterile intellects which lack the faculty of rising above the

material world.

[Sidenote: With the Legitimacy.]

Although my part finishes with the Legitimacy, all my wishes are for

France, whatever be the powers which her improvident whim may lead her

to obey. As for myself, I ask for nothing more; I would wish only not

too long to outlive the ruins which lie crumbling at my feet. But

one's years are like the Alps: scarce has one surmounted the first,

before others rise before one. Alas, those last and higher mountains

are uninhabited, arid and topped with snow!

[Footnote 263: This book was written in Paris, in August and September

1830, and revised in December 1840.--T.]

[Footnote 264: Michel Chevalier (1806-1879), who later achieved

distinction as the promoter of the Treaty of Commerce between France

and England.--T.]

[Footnote 265: Ulysse Trélat (_b._ 1795), a well-known mad-doctor and

politician. He was Minister of Public Works for six weeks in 1848.--T.]

[Footnote 266: Jean Baptiste Teste (1780-1852), a famous lawyer, went

to Belgium after the Second Restoration and became attorney-general

to King William I. of the Netherlands. He returned to France at the

outbreak of the Revolution and filled several ministerial offices

during the reign of Louis-Philippe.--T.]

[Footnote 267: Augustin Guinard has already been mentioned as being

among the first to enter the Tuileries on the 29th of July (_supra_, p.

109).--T.]

[Footnote 268: Charles Hingray (1797-1870), a bookseller and

politician, and a consistent Radical.--T.]

[Footnote 269: Louis François Auguste Cauchois-Lemaire (1789-1861),

a French publicist, founder of the _Nain jaune_ (1814) and author of

an _Histoire de la révolution de Juillet_ (1841). He continued his

opposition to the Monarchy after the Revolution of July.--T.]

[Footnote 270: The Battle of Jemmapes (6 November 1792), in which

Dumouriez defeated the Austrians under the Duke of Saxe-Teschen.

Louis-Philippe, then Duc de Chartres, was present at the battle as a

lieutenant-general, and is said to have decided the victory, which led

to the occupation of Belgium.--T.]

[Footnote 271: The Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), in which

the French under Kellermann, acting under the orders of Dumouriez,

repulsed the Prussians, led by the Duke of Brunswick. In this battle,

which produced an immense moral effect, the Duc de Chartres also

distinguished himself.--T.]

[Footnote 272: Here the _Souvenirs_ of the Duc de Broglie agree with

the _Mémoires d'Outre-tombe._ M. de Broglie says:

"Posted up on M. Laffitte's own door, on the Bourse, and in all the

public places, one read a placard worded as follows:

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

people.