which at that moment were dark and gloomy, blazed with light! The royal exile of Cherbourg, then in all the pageantry of power, had deigned for the first time to visit the cousin who now sat upon his throne. More than one branch of the Bourbons were assembled on the eve of that catastrophe which was to affect the order of their race. The fête given was in honour of the King of Naples. "C'est une fête toute Napolitaine, monseigneur," said Monsieur de Salvandy; sons sur un volcan.”* 66 nous dan **C'est une fête toute Napolitaine, monseigneur," said M. de Salvandy; 86 nous dansons sur un volcan." And brilliant must have been that fête; extending from the terrace to the trees, from arcade to arcade, the lights of the palace confounded themselves with the lights of the vast amphitheatre around, and mingled the prince with the people, the monarch with the mob, in one confused blaze-you saw the court, the city-the two parties in presence who were soon to dispute the victory. At this fête a conversation took place so singular and so interesting that, having mentioned the fête, I cannot omit the conversation. I give it as M. de Salvandy has himself related it. "It took place as the consequence of the bon-mot- C'est une fête toute Napolitaine, monseigneur; nous dansons sur un volcan.' The prince (Duc d'Orleans) standing behind the 'fauteuils' of the princesses and the king, seized my arm quickly as I said this, and doing me the honour to draw me towards him, That there is a volcano,' said his royal highness, 'I believe as well as you; and, at all events, the fault is no fault of mine: I shall not have to reproach myself for allowing the bandage to remain unlifted that covers the king's eyes. But what can one do? nothing is listened to, and God only knows where this will lead us!' "Far! monseigneur, it will lead us far!--that is my conviction. I feel also in the midst of this fête, so animated and so beautiful, a profound sentiment of sorrow: I ask myself where in six months will be this brilliant society? where will be these crowds so joyous ? that princess so gay (alluding to Madame la Duchesse de Berri, who was galloping' with Count Rodolph d'Appony)? where, in fact, will be our country? Within six months we shall probably be divided into the proscribed and the proscribing.' "Certes,' answered his royal highness, I do not know what will happen-I do not know where those you speak of will be in six months; but I know where I shall be, whatever comes. I and my family will remain in this palace; it is enough to have been twice an exile through the faults of others. Whatever be the dangers, I shall not move from this spot; I shall not separate my lot and the lot of my children from the fate of my country. What I say to you I make no secret of elsewhere-lately, indeed, at Rosny, I said pretty fully what I think of all this; and there is the King of Naples, who was with us, and who saw clearly our position. That prince, whom you see so broken, and who nevertheless is four years younger than I am, is a man of a good deal of sense; circumstances oblige him to Such are the vicissitudes of history! The same Richelieu who tore down the pillars of the ancient be an absolute king (Austrian bayonets), but his own inclinations would have led him differently. He has made, I assure you, some very sensible observations. By-the-by, we spoke at Rosny of some remarks of yours." "I said that I was convinced that the monarchy was falling, and that I was not less convinced that the fall of the throne would compromise for a hundred years the prosperity and the liberty of France.' "In afflicting myself as much as you can do,' said the prince, 'at the conduct which the king is pursuing, I am not so frightened as you are at its probable results. There is in France a strong love of order-that France which the government will not understand is excellent, is admirable; see how the law is respected amid so many provocations! The experience of the Revolution (1789) is present to all; its conquests, its follies, and its crimes are detested. I am convinced that a new revolution would in no respects resemble that which we have seen.' 66 6 'Monseigneur, that is to believe in a revolution of 1688. But when England departed from the path of legitimacy, the aristocracy remained as an element of order; with us there is no aristocracy to be called an aristocracy, and what there is of one will perish with the Bourbons: every thing will again be smoothed down to a level, and I do not think a pure democracy capable of founding any thing that is to have duration.' "Monsieur de Salvandy, you do not do justice to the effect of that diffusion of intelligence which follows the diffusion of fortunes. The world has completely changed since forty years; the middle classes are not all society, but they form its force, they have a constant interest in order, and they join to that knowledge which communicates the wants of a great empire that power necessary to combat and suppress bad passions. Jacobinism is impossible where the greater portion of the community have possessions to lose.' "I have always thought, monseigneur, and I still maintain the same opinion, that it is a dangerous error to consider that property alone is the guarantee of a desire for order. Property with us is so divided that it has its multitude, envious of every superior, and inimical to every power. I should fear that that multitude, being the most numerous party, and always disposed to satisfy its hatred of the higher classes, would soon, by its levelling schemes, bring us to anarchy, if anarchy were not the commencement of the new régime.' "Monsieur de Salvandy, believe me, all that the country wants is the sincere establishment of a constitutional government; this is all it asks. The evil has arrived from the impossibility, among certain persons, of accepting at once, et de bonne foi,' all the results of the Revolution, and of the Charta more particularly. The faults of the last Revolution sprang from the false distribution of rank and fortune, which was united with the wretched education that characterized the ancient régime. We have left all that behind us. My political religion consists in the belief, that with constitutional opinions all may be directed right. These principles I have always held. When an exile at the court of Sicily, I was asked, in order to obtain my wife, to make certain concessions. I declared that my opinions ་ man, monarchy built the palace from which the new monarchy was to be taken;* at once an emblem of the who united the habits of the prince with the ambition of the priest, and of the time, which saw no dissimilarity in the titles "cardinal" and "courtier," this palace was adorned with all the taste and the luxury of the seventeenth century; and combined, in a singular manner, the avocations of the church with the were invariable, that in those opinions I would bring up my children, and that I would do this as much for their interest as for a love of truth. The misfortune of princes is, that they do not know the people, and that they entertain and cherish ideas and opinions different from those whom they govern. This is why I gave a public education to my sons; and in every respect it has succeeded. I wished them at once to be princes and citizens. I wished that they should not deem themselves a favoured race; that they should not participate in the habits of a corrupt circle; that they should not always have before their eyes the veil of a court education; that they should not be bound by the tastes of childhood to those interested in deceiving them, and moreover frequently deceived. Such has been my object; and I am certain that I have to congratulate myself on the course I have pursued.' "The Duke of Orleans was at first standing; he afterward made me sit down by his side; we were exactly behind Charles X., who might have heard every word we were saying." Let us do justice to the King of the French! Henry IV. never delivered a speech which contained so much goodness, sense, and truth as there is to be found in these remarks; they offer a fair justification of Louis Philippe's conduct to the family he dethroned; they would offer the best security to the people whom he governs, if we had not unfortunately so many examples of the corrupting influence of power, of the heart being changed, and the understanding blinded by a successful ambition. The Palais Royal, constructed after the plans of Lemercier, was one of the works of his magnificent reign, and was called, during his lifetime, "Palais Cardinal." Funeste bâtiment autant que magnifique, Ouvrage qui n'est rien qu'un effet des malheurs, pleasures of the world. It had its boudoirs, its gallery, its theatre, and its chapel.* The ancient garden of the Palais Royal, much larger than the present one, comprehended, besides the present garden, the streets De Valois, De Montpensier, and De Beaujolais, as well as that space now occupied by the sides of the palace, which have been more recently built. Its great ornament was a large alley of mulberry-trees, old, and "thick of leaves;" and beneath this alley's venerable shade were usually collected the idle and inquisitive of one sex, the profligate and purchasable of another: seventeen hundred and eighty-two, that revolutionary epoch, laid low even the mulberry-trees, in spite of the songs and epigrams with which the improvement was received. Three sides of the present square were then completed; the fourth, constructed provisionally of wood, was that singular and shabby row of stalls which we still remember, originally called "Camp des Tartares," and which has but lately given way to the superb gallery constructed by the present king. There are spots to which a certain destiny seems attached. As early as Anne of Austria, the troubles of the Fronde might be said to commence at the Palais Royal. Here it was that the parliament, assembled in the royal gallery, declared in favour of the wishes of the people! and here it was, about a hundred and fifty years afterward, that a young man (Camille Desmoulins), jumping upon one of the straw chairs, harangued the populace on the night of the famous charge of the Prince de Lambesc, and sounded the first notes of that revolution which commenced by the assault of the Bastille, and ended by the expulsion of the senate. It was in the Palais Royal that the club of the Jacobins was *Louis XIV. gave the Palais Royal to the Duke of Orleans. In this palace have successively dwelt Richelieu, Louis XIII., Anne of Austria, Henrietta of England, and six princes (including the present king) of the house of Orleans. It was then that the Duc d'Orleans replied to some one who asked whether he would not find the building very expensive, "Point de tout, car tout le monde me jette la pierre." formed; it was in the Palais Royal that its rival club of the Thermidorians was held; the centre of action, discussion, politics-every "café" in this historical spot is sacred for its recollections and its opinions. The Café de Foy was the theatre of the Dantoniststhe Café de Chartres of the Gironde. The Hundred Days had its "café" of patriots; and the Restoration its "café" of enthusiastic youth and dissatisfied soldiers. I do not know a better description of the kind of gentlemen who frequent this resort than is contained in the simple fact mentioned by M. de Roch, viz. that "there is not an hôtel garni' in the place." The persons you meet are a population of strollers-of wanderers from every part of Paris, and from every part of the world-of men who seek no rest but such as may be found in a chair-who desire no information not contained in a newspaper, no excitement beyond that which is offered by certain houses in the vicinity. The police, by no means less punctilious since the revolution than during the pious "régime" that it destroyed, have completely driven away those improper ladies who used to horrify all more decent and respectable matrons, by appearing as indecorously dressed as if they had been going to a ball in good society. This, no doubt, has very much improved the evening company of the Palais Royal. But the most virtuous have a tide-mark in their morality, and neither the "Jesuits" nor the "Doctrine" have allowed theirs to overflow the point at which it might do injury to the revenue. No the gambling-house is to be open night and day to all adventurers, and the morgue and the treasury are filled by the same miserable contrivance. The following passage, taken from a popular French novel, presents a picture of one of these iniquitous resources of the exchequer : "Enter! how bare! The walls are covered with coarse paper to the height of your head! The floor is dirty, and a number of straw chairs, drawn round a cloth threadbare from the rubbing of gold, manifest a strange indifference to luxury among those who are |