THE DUKE DE MORTEM A RT'S ADMINISTRATION. 495 



Count d'Argout and M. Langsdorf, the assistant secretary, made the 

 best of their way to Paris about seven o'clock on Friday morning. They 

 soon found it necessary, however, to leave the duke's carriage and take 

 different sides of the way, the better to escape observation. The picture 

 which is given of the journey is quite characteristic. It is impossible to 

 doubt either the author's devotion to the cause in which he had 

 embarked, or his utter want of that courage and self-possession which 

 are necessary to the humblest partizan in such an enterprise. In passing 

 through the Place de la Revolution, which had been the scene of so 

 many horrors, he pressed his hand to his breast and felt, he says, as if 

 every one could read on his forehead, that he was the bearer of ordon- 

 nances which bore the hated signature of Charles X. Nothing occured, 

 however, to interrupt their progress. It was half past eight o'clock, and 

 every door and window in the Rue Royale was closed. " How dread- 

 fully tranquil/' said the affrighted secretary. " C'est le calme de la 

 force" was the philosophical reply of the Duke de Mortemart. They 

 were proceeding by the Rue des Maturins towards the residence of 

 M. Lafitte, when they met the deputy Berard, the author of the first 

 draft of the charter, who was, of course, known to M. d'Argout, 

 although not to the Duke de Mortemart. On hearing the duke's name, 

 and learning the object of his mission, M. Berard assured them it was 

 then too late, and that his personal safety would be compromised if he 

 attempted to enter the house of M. Lafitte, which was then surrounded 

 by the rabble in an extreme state of excitement. Deterred from his 

 original design, the duke resolved on proceeding to the Luxembourg, 

 where a number of the peers were assembled, and from thence address- 

 ing himself in the king's name to the deputies, at the Palais Bourbon, 

 and to the provisional government at the Hotel de Ville. The fruitless- 

 iiess of these negotiations proved how truly M. Berard had estimated 

 the chances of the duke's success. It was, indeed, too late; but let us 

 rejoice in the interest of humanity, that the obstinacy of the king which 

 made it so, was accompanied on the part of his ministers by such a 

 degree of mismanagement as to make the struggle a short one, and give 

 an easy victory to the cause of freedom. 



In several parts of this book of M. Mazas, indications may be found 

 of an attempt to make practical use of the maxims divide et empera. The 

 difference of opinion between the deputies and the self-constituted 

 provisional government, is said to have been suggested as affording the 

 means, if adroitly acted upon, of producing such a state of things as to 

 make the acknowledgment of Henry V. a sort of political necessity. 

 The offer of the ministry to Perier and Gerard, in conjunction with the 

 Duke de Mortemart was evidently made on the same principle. And 

 in the course of the journey to Cherbourg when all hope had fled, 

 the poor old king could not deny himself the satisfaction of distinguish- 

 ing between the commissioners who were charged with the unwelcome 

 task of attending him to the place of embarkation, treating two of them 

 with all the hauteur of royalty, and receiving the third with those smiles 

 of condescension which courtiers and kings know how to value and 

 bestow. 



The whole performance, although a volume of some four hundred 

 pages, would probably have been passed over in silence by the liberal 

 press, if it had not contained an attack on the new minister, M. Guizot. 

 Introduced apropos de rien, and written in a spirit of virulence to which 



