The proclamation was taken to the Elective Chamber and received with that fifty-year-old revolutionary enthusiasm: another proclamation was issued in reply, drawn up by M. Guizot[288]. The deputies returned to the Palais-Royal; the Prince became affected, accepted afresh, and could not help bewailing the deplorable circumstances which forced him to be Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom.
Stunned by the blows that had been struck at it, the Republic tried to defend itself; but its real head, General La Fayette, had almost abandoned it. He delighted in the concert of adoration that reached him from every side; he greedily inhaled the perfume of revolution; he was enchanted at the idea that he was the arbiter of France, that he was able, by stamping the earth with his foot, to cause a republic or a monarchy to spring up, as he pleased; he loved to lull himself in the uncertainty which pleases minds that dread conclusions, because an instinct warns them that they cease to be anything when the facts are accomplished.
The other republican leaders had ruined themselves in advance by their several works: the praises of the Terror had reminded Frenchmen of 1793 and caused them to recoil. The re-establishment of the National Guard at the same time killed the principle or the power of insurrection in the combatants of July. M. de La Fayette did not perceive that, in dreaming of the Republic, he had armed three millions of fighting men against it.
The D'Orléans pedigree.
Be this as it may, ashamed of being duped so soon, the younger men made some show of resistance. They replied by proclamations and posters to the proclamations and posters of the Duc d'Orléans. He was told that, if the deputies had so far lowered themselves as to beseech him to accept the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom, the Chamber of Deputies, elected under an aristocratic law, had no right to manifest the will of the people. It was proved to Louis-Philippe that he was the son of Louis Philippe Joseph; that Louis Philippe Joseph was the son of Louis Philippe[289]; that Louis Philippe was the son of Louis[290], who was the son of Philip II.[291] the Regent; that Philip II. was the son of Philip I.[292] who was the brother of Louis XIV.: therefore Louis-Philippe d'Orléans was a Bourbon and Capet, not a Valois. M. Laffitte nevertheless continued to look upon him as belonging to the dynasty of Charles IX. and Henry III., and said:
"Thiers knows all about it."
Later, the Lointier gathering[293] protested that the nation was in arms to maintain its rights by force. The central committee of the 12th Ward declared that the people had not been consulted on the method of its Constitution, that the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers, holding their powers from Charles X., had fallen with him and could not, in consequence, represent the nation; that the Provisional Government must remain in permanence, under the presidency of La Fayette, until a Constitution had been discussed and fixed as the fundamental basis of government.
On the morning of the 30th, there was a question of proclaiming the Republic. A few determined men threatened to kill the Municipal Commission if it did not keep the power in its hands. Did they not also blame the House of Peers? They were furious at its audacity. The audacity of the House of Peers! Surely this must have been the last outrage and the last injustice which it expected to receive at the hands of public opinion!
A plan was formed: twenty of the most fiery young men were to lie in wait in a little street running into the Quai de la Ferraille and fire on Louis-Philippe when he went from the Palais-Royal to the Hôtel de Ville. They were stopped and told that they would at the same time be killing Laffitte, Pajol and Benjamin Constant. Lastly it was proposed to kidnap the Duc d'Orléans and put him on board ship at Cherbourg: a strange meeting, if Charles X. and Philip had come together again in the same port, on the same vessel, one dispatched to a foreign shore by the middle class, the other by the Republicans!
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