"Well, to the Palais-Royal!"
Forthwith I was escorted there, amid cries of "The Charter for ever! The liberty of the press for ever! Chateaubriand for ever!" In the Cour des Fontaines, M. Barba[260], the bookseller, left his house and came to embrace me.
We arrived at the Palais-Royal; I was plumped down in a café under the wooden arcade. I was dying with heat. With clasped hands I reiterated my request for remission of my glory: not a bit of it; the whole of that youth refused to leave hold of me. In the crowd was a man in a waistcoat-jacket with the sleeves turned up, with black hands, a sinister face and gleaming eyes, such as I had seen so often at the commencement of the Revolution: he continually tried to approach me, and the young men always thrust him back. I learnt neither his name nor what he wanted with me.
I had to make up my mind at last to say that I was going to the House of Peers. We left the café; the cheers began afresh. In the court-yard of the Louvre, different kinds of shouts were raised: some cried, "To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!" others, "Long live the First Consul!" and seemed to wish to make me the heir of Bonaparte the Republican. Hyacinthe, who accompanied me, received his share of hand-shaking and embraces. We crossed the Pont des Arts and took the Rue de Seine. The people flocked on our passage; they crowded the windows. I suffered under all these honours, for my arms were being torn from their sockets. One of the young men who were pushing me from behind suddenly slipped his head between my legs and lifted me on his shoulders. New cheers; they shouted to the spectators in the street and at the windows:
"Hats off! Hurrah for the Charter!"
And I replied:
"Yes, gentlemen, hurrah for the Charter! But hurrah for the King!"
This cry was not taken up, but it provoked no anger. And that is how the game was lost! All might still be arranged, but it was necessary to present only popular men to the people: in revolutions, a name does more than an army.
I am carried to the Luxembourg.