the comic element was supplied in this case by our professors of
languages, drawing, and so forth, who had not dared to go back into
Paris after leaving it on the 28th, on account of the fighting. When
they had made up their minds to return on the 29th, we persuaded those
of them who wore moustaches that they would run very great risks, and
even be taken for soldiers in disguise. Whereupon the schoolroom was at
once turned into a barber's shop, where a general shaving was performed,
with the inevitable change of appearance resulting there-from, which
increased the alarm of the individuals operated upon tenfold.

While our professors were shaving off their moustaches, our father was
disappearing from Neuilly. His movements were rigorously concealed from
us, and I never learnt what they really were even in later days. So I
will not attempt to speak of them. We were soon aware of the bare fact
that he was in Paris, exercising public functions which were somewhat
ill-defined as yet; and on the evening of the 31st my mother informed us
that we were going to join him at the Palais-Royal. [Footnote: It is not
for me to pass judgment on my father's conduct in accepting the crown in
1830. There is no doubt the July Revolution was a great misfortune. It
gave a fresh blow to the monarchical principle, and it unfortunately
encouraged those who speculate in insurrection. But I know as a fact
that my father never desired it, and indeed watched its approach with
the deepest sorrow. When the throne of Charles X. collapsed without his
being able to defend it in any way, he certainly felt the most
passionate desire to escape the common exile and to continue living a
life which was to him the happiest of lives in France. The struggle one
over, and the country in revolt from end to end, he realized that the
only way in which he could escape exile was to associate himself with
the movement, and at the outset he certainly did it solely in the hope
of bringing back Henri V. to the throne. When this hope failed him, he