political or social, correctly. I only remember that it filled me with
the deepest astonishment. Never having witnessed any kind of
disturbance, I had not the faintest notion what a revolution might be
like. I had always seen the King and the Royal Family treated with a
respect which, indeed, they have never forfeited, and I was a hundred
miles from the thought that they could possibly be banished. It is a
fact, nevertheless, that the beginning of 1830 differed from other
years, and that something seemed to be brewing. Strange remarks were
made at school, over and over again, even among us little ones; our
tutors, all of them connected with the press, were what was called in
those days "dans le mouvement"--abreast of the times, and they never
stopped talking politics. Where were they not talked, indeed? It was a
downright disease. The speech of M. de Salvandy, on the occasion of the
fete given by my father at the Palais-Royal in May, that year, in honour
of the King of Naples, my uncle and godfather, may be called to mind. "A
real Neapolitan fete indeed, Sire!--for we are dancing on a volcano."

And a truly Neapolitan fete it was, not only on account of the presence
of the sovereigns of the two Sicilies, and of the ideal beauty of the
night, but also by reason of the tarantella, a sort of ballet, which was
danced in the middle of the evening, by Madame la Duchesse de Berri and
thirty of the most beautiful young ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
in Neapolitan costume, among whom I think _I_ still see, compact of
grace and elegance, the lovely Denise du Roure, soon to become Comtesse
d'Hulst. The tarantella was followed by a polonaise, led by Comte
Rodolphe Appony and the Duchesse de Rauzan, resplendent in blue and
gold. A more sedate dance, this, performed by noble lords and ladies,
all in Hungarian costume, and escorted by pages, bearing their
respective banners. It would have been hard to say which of the ladies
taking part in these two dances bore off the palm for aristocratic