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Updated: June 5, 2025
I am told that no day passes in which a crowd does not assemble beneath the windows of Louis-Philippe and loudly vociferate for his presence. M. Laffitte is not unfrequently seen with the king on these occasions, and when they embrace the crowd applauds. I cannot imagine a more painful position than that of the Queen of the French.
Every one invests his money, and turns it over to the best of his powers. "You are quite mistaken, my angel, if you suppose that King Louis-Philippe rules us; he himself knows better than that. He knows as well as we do that supreme above the Charter reigns the holy, venerated, substantial, delightful, obliging, beautiful, noble, ever-youthful, and all-powerful five-franc piece!
His fall was far less justifiable than that of Charles X. There was little with which he could be reproached. Doubtless he was suspicious of universal suffrage, but the French Revolution had more than once been quite suspicious of it. Louis-Philippe not being, like the Directory, an absolute ruler, could not, as the latter had done, annul unfavourable elections.
Pathetically he announced that his sister was planning to marry him to a Mademoiselle Bonnard, god-daughter to King Louis-Philippe; but still no answer came. On the 1st of November, as he related to his Eve afterwards, he lost one of the two shirt-studs which Madame de Berny had given him, and which he wore alternately with another pair presented to him by Madame Hanska.
Diane de Poitiers, a true chasseresse des bouquins, was herself the daughter of a bibliophile. The Comte de St. Vallier loved books in Italian bindings, and there is a Roman de Perceforest in the collection of the Duc d'Aumale, that bears the Saint Vallier arms and marks of ownership, though it was confidently believed to have been bound for Grolier when it belonged to King Louis-Philippe.
I saw Charles X. and adhered to him, monsieur; I saw Louis-Philippe and adhered to him, monsieur; I saw Napoleon and adhered to him; but I have never seen the Republic." Patissot, still serious, answered: "The Republic, monsieur, is represented by its president!" The other grumbled: "Well, them, show him to me!" Patissot shrugged his shoulders.
That is a stylish problem to work at, and its solution would be more important than the election of an academician. Oh! ye men of little faith! Long live Saint Polycarp! Fangeat, who has reappeared recently, is the citizen who, on the 25th day of February, 1848, demanded the death of Louis-Philippe "without a trial." That is the way one serves the cause of progress.
A stranger would not appreciate the degree of praise which is contained in the word quiet when used by the French, who appear to consider it as comprising all the cardinal virtues; when seeking a house or apartments, if you say any thing favourable or unfavourable of them, they never fail to remind you that they are so quiet. The same eulogy they will pronounce on their daughters with peculiar pride and energy, when they wish to extol them to the skies, and in good truth their demoiselles are quiet enough in all conscience, for it requires often a considerable degree of ingenuity to extract from them more than monosyllables. We have been accustomed to consider the French as a restless, capricious, volatile people, and so I suppose they might have been formerly, but now they are undoubtedly the reverse, being a quiet routine plodding sort of people, particularly as regards the provincials; and even amongst the Parisians there are thousands that reside in one quarter of the city, which they seldom quit, never approaching what they consider the gay portion of Paris, but live amongst each other, visiting only within their own circle, consisting almost entirely of their relations and family connexions. This feeling is certainly exemplified still farther at Boulogne, as I knew an old couple who lived in the upper town, which joins the lower town except by the separation of the wall of the fortifications, and had not been in the latter for five years, because they considered it was too bustling and too much a place of pleasure for such quiet, homely, and orderly folk as they professed to be and certainly were, in every sense of the word. At Bordeaux I knew three old ladies who were born in that city, and never had been in any other town during their whole lives, nor ever desired to pass the walls of their native place. Many persons who have been accustomed to spend their days in the provinces have a sort of horror of Paris; I remember an old gentleman at Rouen, who with his antiquated spouse lived a sort of Darby and Joan kind of life, their only daughter being married and living elsewhere; and on my once asking him if he had ever been to Paris, he replied that he was once so situated as to be compelled to go upon urgent business that rendered his presence indispensable, but that he saw very little of the place, because he had always heard that it was a city replete with vice and dissipation, and that during the few days his affairs compelled him to stay he kept close to his apartment, only quitting it to proceed to the house wherein he had to transact business, and then he went in a fiacre, as, if he had walked perhaps he might have been jostled, run over, robbed, or something unpleasant might have occurred. "Ah! that's very true, you did quite right, and acted very prudently, my dear," observed his wife, "and nobody knows the anxiety I felt till you came back again." Although the rising generation of the French is not quite so dormant in their ideas as that which is passing, yet there is not even with them the same spirit of travel and enterprise which exist in the English. That France has had, a reputation for restlessness, love of change, and tumult, can only be explained by stating that until the present time for the last two centuries, with the exception of Louis the Eighteenth, she has been most unfortunate in her rulers, who have been supporting a state of extravagant splendour which could alone be sustained by being wrung from the middle and the lower classes; hence the revolution in 1789, which might be considered as the ripened fruit which the preceding reigns had been nurturing. Of the affair of the three days in 1830, few I believe will deny the intensity of the provocation, but then it will be said how do you account for their having been so turbulent and discontented during the present reign? To which I should answer in the same manner as an officer, who, defending the character of his regiment, observed that it was composed of a thousand men, of which nine hundred and fifty were peaceable and quiet subjects, but the other fifty being very noisy they were constantly heard of, and his corps had obtained the appellation of the noisy regiment, as no one bestowed a thought upon the 'nine hundred and fifty men who were orderly' because no one ever heard of them: thus it may be said of France, the population may be estimated at about thirty-five millions, of which perhaps one million may be discontented, and amongst them are many persons connected with the press, who not only contrive by that means to extend their war-whoop to every corner of France, but as newspapers are conveyed to all the civilised parts of the world, and the only medium by which a country is judged by those who have not an opportunity of visiting it and making their own observations by a residence amongst the people, it naturally is inferred in England and in other nations that the French are a most dissatisfied and refractory people. But a case in point may be cited, which proves that the dissatisfaction is not general, nor has ever been during the present reign. From the time that Louis-Philippe accepted the throne in 1830, until June the 6th, 1832, a number of young men in the different colleges at Paris occupied themselves constantly with the affairs of the state, each forming a sort of political utopia, and however different were their various theories, they all united in one object, and that was to overthrow the existing government, and secretly took measures for arming themselves, and mustering what strength they could collect in point of numbers, which was but very insignificant compared to the importance of the blow they intended to strike; but they counted on the rising of the people, and the event proved they counted without their host. June the 6th, 1832, being the day appointed for the funeral of General Lamarque, they chose it for the development of their project, and although the misguided youths fought with skill, constancy and courage, even with a fanatic devotion to their cause, yet the populace took no part with them, and the National Guard were the first to fire upon them; and after two days hard fighting in the barricades they had raised, scarcely any remained who were not either killed or wounded. Since that, no attempt of the slightest importance has been made to overthrow the government, and in fact I have ever found that ninety-nine Parisians out of a hundred exclaim "Tranquillité
Every time that she went to the Palais Royal, where her visits were incessant, she was received with transports of affection. Nowhere did she enjoy herself more. Louis-Philippe treated her with deference and courtesy.
"I went and released the young man," Erik continued, "and told him to come with me to Christine ... They kissed before me in the Louis-Philippe room ... Christine had my ring ... I made Christine swear to come back, one night, when I was dead, crossing the lake from the Rue-Scribe side, and bury me in the greatest secrecy with the gold ring, which she was to wear until that moment. ... I told her where she would find my body and what to do with it... Then Christine kissed me, for the first time, herself, here, on the forehead don't look, daroga! here, on the forehead ... on my forehead, mine don't look, daroga! and they went off together... Christine had stopped crying ... I alone cried ... Daroga, daroga, if Christine keeps her promise, she will come back soon! ..."
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