this cordiality, that my parents had consented to receive the Baronne de
Feucheres, who held great sway over the Duke, but who had never been
admitted to Court. I can see the handsome old man yet, laconic in
speech, his profile of the most strongly marked Bourbon type, his hair
and pigtail white, with his tightly buttoned blue coat, from which a
lace frill escaped, and his trousers, which were always much too short,
showing his white stockings underneath. On the evening I speak of there
had been a great gathering at Saint-Leu--a big dinner, then a drawing-
room play, acted by Madame de Feucheres and the Duke's gentlemen. In the
audience were many officers of the Royal Guard, and numerous other
persons, whose names were known to me from having heard them quoted as
being amongst those ardent Conservatives called at that time the
"Ultras." One of them, a M. de Vitrolles, attracted my attention by
holding a long conversation with my father in one of the intervals
between the acts. He has since related this conversation in his Memoirs,
and also the conviction it gave him of the horror with which the idea of
a fresh revolution filled my father. Their only disagreement was as to
the means to avert it. Which of the two was in the right?

That evening we went back to Neuilly, and the next morning, 26th of
July, as we were just getting ready, Nemours and I, to start for school,
somebody opened the door and launched the remark to our tutors: "The
coup d'Etat is in the Moniteur!" "What!" "Yes! The Decrees." Whereupon
the tutors rushed to the family drawing-room, whither we followed them.
There sat my father, thunderstruck, the Moniteur in his hand. When he
saw the tutors come in, he threw up his arms in despair, and let them
fall again. After a silence on his Part, during which my mother rapidly
acquainted the gentlemen with the state of affairs, my father said:
"They are mad!" That was all, and after another silence, a long one--
"They will get themselves banished again. Oh! for my part, I have been