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Rumigny) had been desired to say to him that, if it would be useful to his paper, he should have daily accounts of the military operations that were about to commence in the north of France; that the Prince de Joinville and the Duc d'Aumale were gone to Lille to take the command of troops to act against the President; that the Royal Family had endeavoured to dissuade the Prince de Joinville from this step, but in vain; and that, finding him determined on doing so, the Duc d'Aumale had said: "My brother is a sailor; he knows nothing of military operations. I am a soldier; I will go with him and share his fate and fortune." Mr. Borthwick said he had declined the offered communications, as he did not wish his paper to be considered the organ of the Orleans family; and as the communication had not been made to him under the condition of secresy, he came at once to tell me of it.

'I immediately wrote to Sir George Grey, then Home Secretary, to ask him to make enquiry, through the detachment of police stationed at Claremont for the protection of the ex-Royal Family, to know whether all the French princes were there that is to say, those who were in England. I said that General de Rumigny or Borthwick must have made a mistake in naming D'Aumale, because he was then at Naples, and it must be the Duc de Nemours who had gone with Joinville.

In the course of the afternoon I received from Sir G. Grey a report that both Nemours and Joinville were still at Claremont. That Joinville had been several times in London in the course of this week, and was that day at Claremont. That Joinville had been very ill for several days, and had been confined to his room, and nobody had seen him but his medical attendant, who visited him twice a day. This report at once showed that Joinville. was off, as I afterwards heard was the case. He went as

far as Ostend, but found that the attempt would not succeed, and he came back again. I believe that the garrison of Lille had been changed. This confirmed the story as to Joinville, but left unexplained the statement. as to D'Aumale. But some days afterwards I received a letter from my brother, Minister at Naples, written before the news of the coup d'état had reached Naples, saying that the Duc and Duchesse d'Aumale had received. alarming accounts of the health of the ex-Queen of France, and that in consequence thereof the Duke had suddenly set off for England. That two days afterwards the Duchesse d'Aumale had received better accounts, and she regretted that her husband had not waited a day or two, as he would then have been spared a fatiguing journey in the depth of winter.

This statement confirmed the whole of General de Rumigny's story, for D'Aumale had evidently, by preconcerted arrangements, left Naples to meet Joinville on a a given day at a given place; and this proved that there had been a plot long proposed for an attack upon the President.

About a fortnight or three weeks afterwards Count Lavradis, the Portuguese Minister in London, went to Claremont to visit the Princesse de Joinville, who is a Brazilian, and he said he found her tout éplorée at the turn of affairs in France, and that she said it was most afflicting. "Et pour moi, qui devait être à Paris le 20!"

All this clearly proves that if the President had not struck when he did, he himself would have been knocked over.'1

This note may be taken as an authentic justification of the coup d'état written by an impartial statesman six years after the event.

1 The Life of Viscount Palmerston. By the Hon. Evelyn Ashley.

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CHAPTER II.

DECEMBER 1, 1851.

ON December 1 the authors and supporters of the Pradié proposition were cheerful in the belief that, whereas the President had adjourned all action against the Assembly over the holidays, they were on the eve of an event that would enable them to carry out Changarnier's old proposal, and drive the Chief Magistrate to Vincennes in a panier à salade. The princesses were packing at Claremont; the Prince of Joinville, giving out that he was confined to his room, had crossed the Channel to meet his brother D'Aumale and take the head of troops believed to be well affected towards them at Lille; 1 and all Soho was agog for an exodus en masse to support the Red Republic and inaugurate an European Socialist Revolution.

At the Élysée the current of life was as quiet as on ordinary days. The President was closeted in the morning (as usual) with his secretary, M. Mocquard; he gave interviews to his Ministers, received friends, attended to their requests, and gossiped with them. The Hon. Mrs. Norton happened to be in Paris, on her way south to see her sick son. She had a protégée who wanted facilities for some researches at the National Library. She had met Prince Louis often in London society, and claimed his good offices for her friend. The Prince took some trouble for her on this eventful morning, and

1 The Life of Viscount Palmerston. By the Hon. Evelyn Ashley.

II.

wrote her a charming note, telling her he was always CHAP. at her service. The Count de Morny was about in society as usual-at the Jockey Club, in the Bois, and elsewhere. The President had a dinner in the evening, and his ordinary Monday reception to follow. The Ministers were dining with M. Daviel, Keeper of the Seals. About six in the evening the Minister of Public Works called on his colleague De Saint-Arnaud, to accompany him to the dinner. 'You take matters easily,' said the Minister to the General. 'You were not in the Assembly to-day. Do you know that you are to be severely called to order to-morrow?' 'Well,' said Saint-Arnaud, laughing, 'I have my answer quite ready.'

In the morning a friend had asked M. de Morny at the Jockey Club for two tickets for the sitting of the morrow. M. de Morny gave them, saying: If you find any difficulty in getting in, send to me.'

6

In the evening at the Opéra Comique, when the Count was sauntering from box to box, Madame Liadières said to him playfully: It is reported that they are going to sweep out the Chamber. What shall you do, M. de Morny?' 'Well, madame, I shall try to be with the broom.'

That the Prince was in high spirits was natural. He had come to a final resolution after many months of intense anxiety and of continued deceptions. He had finally parted from the Burgraves. He had done with the duplicity of M. Thiers, the ridiculous egotism of Léon Faucher, the airs and graces of Odilon Barrot, who thought himself as much the man of the situation as General Changarnier; with the Dufaures, De Tocquevilles, and De Rémusats all enemies who had worn, from time to time, the masks of friends. To a nature like that of the Prince it must have been a mighty relief to withdraw himself within the lines of his troops of partisans, and to

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have to consult only those on whom he could rely with entire confidence. The Clarys, the Vaudreys, the Bacciocchis, the Mocquards, the Flahauts, the Conneaus, the Fleurys, and the Persignys were at any rate trusty friends who had clung to him in the dark days of his life. His three years of power, while they had made him acquainted with the rusés, self-seeking statesmen of the Monarchy of July, had drawn to him hosts of hearty sympathisers out of the millions who called him to the Chief Magistracy; so that when he had resolved to have done with the Assembly, and to throw himself on the country, he felt the nation warming to him through them, while his spirit was no longer chafed by contact with the factions which had harassed every step of his progress heretofore.

The meanness of some of the Orleanist statesmen who endeavoured to harm the character of the President is nowhere more glaringly and unblushingly proclaimed than we find it in many passages of the 'Mémoires' of Odilon Barrot. One passage in particular discovers a breach of confidence as well as a base motive. The President, at the time of his arrival in France, lived conjugally with a lady, who afterwards became Countess de Beauregard. She was the mother of children by him, and, this fault apart, she lived a quiet and refined life. During one of the Prince's provincial tours this lady was lodged, as M. Barrot is compelled to admit, by mistake, in the house of a gentleman who was absent with his family, and who afterwards complained of the circumstance. Whereupon M. Barrot-then Minister-wrote to his brother Ferdinand, who was Secretary-General to the Presidency, asking him to submit the complaint to the Prince, as a warning to him. The Prince's letter to M. Barrot, in reply, shows how he had yearned, through his troubled life, for domestic affections; and how he felt the loneliness of his position when he returned to France.