From hence arose that pregnant saying of Bonnelier: "Vos diables de républicains nous ont donné bien du mal!" ("Your republican devils have done us no end of harm!")
Indeed, it was only with difficulty that republicans gained access to the good old general. They could easily be known, since their number, at the period of which I am speaking, was small, and hardly had one or other of these men come to see him before some one would come in and, under various pretexts, either cut the conversation short or act as a spy.
This was the man with whom the Duc d'Orléans had to deal, and an easy task it was to the prince, who, when he liked, could be most seductively fascinating. Still, the future king wished to be accompanied by a deputation from the Chamber. The Chamber would sooner have sent two deputations than one, and, had the duke expressed the wish, it would have brought up the rear of the procession in a body.
M. Laffitte took the deputation to the Palais-Royal at the appointed hour. They started; but the situation was more serious even than was apparent; it was true that, under pretext of various missions, they had sent the most zealous republicans away from Paris; but there were still a good number left, and these proclaimed loudly that the newly-elected monarch should not reach the Hôtel de Ville. The Duc d'Orléans was on horseback, feeling, no doubt, uneasy at the bottom of his heart, but looking calm outwardly. It was one of the prince's finest qualities: fearful and irresolute while he could not fathom or see the danger; when he was face to face with it, he met it bravely. He could not have said with Cæsar: "Danger and I are two lions born at the same time, I being the elder!" but he could have said he was the younger. M. Laffitte followed in a sedan-chair carried by Savoyards; his foot caused him horrible suffering; he was shod in slippers. Except for the bandages which swathed it, one leg was bare. So, after he had offered the crown to the prince, as president of the Chamber, he leant to him and whispered low in his ear—
"Two slippers and only one stocking. This time, at any rate, if la Quotidienne saw us it would say we were creating a king sans culotte."
All went well from the Palais-Royal to the quay. They were still in the bourgeoisie quarter, and they had come to make a king in their own image, as God made man after His own image. The bourgeoisie saw in the king its own reflection, and gazed with complacency at its own image, up to the moment when it discovered how ugly it was, and then it broke the glass. So the bourgeoisie hailed his election. But, when on the quay, and across the Pont Neuf, and the Place du Châtelet reached, not only did the cheers cease altogether, but the faces of the crowd looked dark, and tremors of anger could be felt in the air. Surely the spirits of the dead were protesting against this new type of Bourbon. At the Hôtel de Ville itself there was a great agitation going on. At last the famous Provisional Government, hitherto invisible, materialised itself: Mauguin, de Schonen, Audry de Puyraveau, Lobau, were all anti-Orléanists: Lobau especially, who had refused to put his signature to an order the previous day, was furious.
"I don't want this one any more than the rest!" he exclaimed; "he is still a Bourbon!"
M. Barthe, the former Carbonaro, was present. The question of drawing up a Republican proclamation arose, and he offered to undertake it, picked up a pen and began to write. While he wrote, General Lobau grew more and more exasperated and went up to M. de Schonen.
"We are risking our heads," he said to him; "but, what matters! Here are two pistols, one for you, one for me ... it is all that is left to two men who have no fear of death!"