"Sire, I was looking to see if by any chance I could find a picture of the Earl of Strafford."[1]
The king smiled and passed on.
These details became known afterwards; they were kept a profound secret at the time. Only two or three men were aware of what was happening. Casimir Périer, who was deeply attached to the Older Branch of the Bourbons, at that time, as were M. Dupin and M. Barrot and many others (we shall see presently how Périer did his utmost to quell the Revolution of July when it broke out) was dining at his country house in the bois de Boulogne, when he received a tiny triangular-shaped note. He opened, read it and grew pale, then livid, and his arms fell to his sides in despair. It announced that the Ordinances had been signed that very day. Who sent him the news never transpired. On the evening of the 25th or 26th, M. de Rothschild, who was speculating on a rise in stocks, received this simple statement from M. de Talleyrand:—
"I have just come from Saint-Cloud: speculate for a fall in prices."
But I, who was neither a M. Casimir Périer nor a M. de Rothschild nor yet a friend of M. de Talleyrand, I, who neither speculated upon rises or falls on the Stock Exchange, knew absolutely nothing of what was going on, and I was about to start for Algiers. Algiers would be a really fine sight during the early days of its conquest. I had taken my seat on the mail coach for Marseilles and packed my luggage; I had exchanged three thousand francs in silver for three thousand francs in gold, and I was to have set out at five in the evening of Monday the 26th, when, at eight on Monday morning, Achille Comte entered my room and said—
"Have you heard the great news?"
"No."
"The Ordinances are announced in the Moniteur. Shall you still go to Algiers?"
"I shall not be so foolish. We shall see stranger events here at home than out there!"
'Then I called my servant.