"His eyes were wan and sunk; his lower jaw, covered only with a little skin, seemed to have disappeared; his beard was bristling, his colour yellow, his glance slow, his breath bated. Already from his mouth issued no longer human words, but oracles."
*
M. le Duc d'Orléans had, throughout his life, entertained for the throne the inclination that every high-born soul feels for power. This inclination is modified according to the possessor's character: impetuous and aspiring, or slack and fawning; imprudent, open, declared in the former, circumspect, hidden, shamefaced in the latter: one, in order to elevate himself, is capable of any crime; the other, in order to rise, can descend to any meanness. M. le Duc d'Orléans belonged to this latter class of ambitious men. Follow this Prince in his career: he never says and never does anything completely; he always leaves a door open for escape. During the Restoration, he flattered the Court and encouraged liberal opinion; Neuilly became the meeting-place of discontent and the discontented. They sighed, they pressed each other's hands with eyes raised to Heaven, but they did not utter a word of enough significance to be reported in high places. When a member of the Opposition died, a carriage was sent to the funeral, but the carriage was empty: the livery is admitted to every door and every grave-side. If, at the time of my disgrace at Court, I found myself at the Tuileries on M. le Duc d'Orléans' path, he went past, taking care to bow to the right, in such a manner that, I being on the left, he turned his shoulder to me. That would be remarked and would do good.
Was M. le Duc d'Orléans aware beforehand of the Ordinances of July? Was he told of them by a person who held M. Ouvrard's secret? What did he think of them? What were his hopes and fears? Did he conceive a plan? Did he urge M. Laffitte to act as he did act, or did he let M. Laffitte act as he pleased? To judge from Louis-Philippe's character, we must presume that he took no resolve, and that his political timidity, taking refuge in his falseness, awaited events as the spider awaits the gnat which will be taken in its web. He allowed the moment to conspire; he himself conspired only by his wishes, of which it is probable that he was afraid.
M. le Duc D'Orléans.
There were two courses open to M. le Duc d'Orléans: the first, and the more honourable, was to hasten to Saint-Cloud, to interpose himself between Charles X. and the people, in order to save the crown of the one and the liberty of the other; the second consisted in flinging himself on the barricades, with the tricolour flag in his hand, and placing himself at the head of the movement of the world. Philip had to choose between the honest man and the great man: he preferred to pilfer the crown from the King and liberty from the people. During the confusion and misfortune of a fire, a pickpocket artfully purloins the most valuable objects from the burning palace, without heeding the cries of a child which the flames have surprised in its cradle.
The rich prey once seized, plenty of hounds were there for the distribution of the quarry: then came all those old corruptions of the preceding systems, those receivers of stolen goods, filthy, half-crushed toads that have been walked upon a hundred times and that live, all flattened out as they are. And yet those are the men of whom one boasts, whose ability one exalts! Milton thought otherwise when he wrote this passage in a sublime letter:
"If ever God poured a strong love for moral beauty in a man's breast, he did so in mine. Wherever I meet a man despising the false esteem of the vulgar, daring to aspire, by his opinions, his language and his conduct, to the greatest excellence which the lofty wisdom of the ages has taught us, I become united to that man by a sort of necessary attachment. There is no power in Heaven or upon earth which can prevent me from contemplating with respect and fondness those who have attained the summit of dignity and virtue."
The blind Court of Charles X. never knew where it stood or with whom it had to do: it might have ordered M. le Duc d'Orléans to Saint-Cloud, and it is probable that, at the first moment, he would have obeyed; it might have had him kidnapped at Neuilly, on the very day of the Ordinances: it took neither course.
On receipt of advices which Madame de Bondy brought him, at Neuilly, in the night of Tuesday the 27th, Louis-Philippe rose at three o'clock in the morning and withdrew to a place known only to his family. He had the double fear of being touched by the insurrection in Paris and of being arrested by a captain of the Guards. He therefore went to the Rainey, there in solitude to listen to the distant gun-shots of the Battle of the Louvre, as I had listened under a tree to those of the Battle of Waterloo. The feelings which doubtless stirred the Prince must have had very little in common with those which oppressed me in the plains of Ghent.