He continued his walk and left me quite stunned; not by his observation, sagacious as it was; but by the thought that it was Chodruc-Duclos who had made it.
The Revolution of July 1830 had, for the moment, interrupted the inveterate habits of two men—Stibert and Chodruc-Duclos.
Stibert was as confirmed a gambler as Duclos was an indefatigable walker. Frascati's, where Stibert spent his days and nights, was closed; the Ordinances had suspended the game of trente-et-un, until the monarchy of July should suppress it altogether. Stibert had not patience to wait till the Tuileries was taken: on 28 July, at three in the afternoon, he compelled the concierge at Frascati's to open its doors to him and to play picquet with him. Duclos, for his part, coming from his rooms to go to his beloved Palais-Royal, found the Swiss defending the approaches to it. Some youths had begun a struggle with them, and one of them, armed with a regulation rifle, was firing on the red-coats with more courage than skill. Duclos watched him and then, growing impatient that anyone should risk his life thus wantonly, he said to the youth—
"Hand me your rifle. I will show you how to use it."
The young fellow lent it him and Duclos took aim.
"Look!" he said; and down dropped a Swiss.
Duclos returned the youth his rifle.
"Oh," said the latter, "upon my word! if you can use it to such good purpose as that, stick to it!"
"Thanks!" replied Duclos, "I am not of that opinion," and, putting the rifle into the youth's hands, he crossed right through the very centre of the firing and re-entered the Palais-Royal, where he resumed his accustomed walk past the bronze Apollo and marble Ulysses, the only society he had the chance of meeting during the 27, 28 and 29 July. This was the third and last time upon which he opened his mouth. Duclos, engrossed as he was with his everlasting walk, would, doubtless, never have found a moment in which to die; only one morning he forgot to wake up. The inhabitants of the Palais-Royal, astonished at having been a whole day without meeting the man with the long beard, learnt, on the following day, from the Cornuet papers, that Chodruc-Duclos had fallen into the sleep that knows no waking, upon his pallet bed in the rue du Pélican.
For three or four years, Duclos, as we have said, had clad himself in garments more like those of ordinary people. The Revolution of July, which exiled the Bourbons, and the trial of the ex-ministers, which ostracised M. de Peyronnet to Ham, removed every reason for his ragged condition, and set a limit to his revenge. In spite of, perhaps even on account of, this change of his outward appearance, Duclos, like Epaminondas, left nothing wherewith to pay for his funeral. The Palais-Royal buried him by public subscription.