The Marshal remained silent for a moment, then replied,
with a smile not less inexpressible than that of the King:

"No, sire; I wanted to compromise you."

The subject of conversation was changed. A few
minutes later the Marshal took leave of the King, and the
King, as he watched him go, said with a smile to the person
who heard this conversation:

"Compromise! compromise! To-day it is called
compromise. In reality, he would have shot me!"

----------



August 4, 1844.

Yesterday the King said to me:

"One of my embarrassments at present, in all this affair
of the University and the clergy, is M. Affre."*

* Archbishop Affre was shot and killed in the Faubourg Saint
Antoine on September 25, 1848, while trying to stop the fighting
between the troops and insurgents.

"Then why, sire," said I, "did you appoint him?"