It would be scarcely correct, however, to speak of such a _possible_ eventuality as the realisation of the prospects of a Legitimate party. As a _party_, properly so called, in the language of political and revolutionary struggle, the legitimists of France can scarcely be said to exist, even although a stanch but small nucleus, professing decidedly legitimist principles, may be found among a certain body of men, chiefly belonging to the old families of France, in private life. During the reign of the Orleans branch, the legitimists gradually dwindled into comparative obscurity--almost every family which professed to entertain legitimist opinions having attached itself, openly or in an underhand manner, to the existing order of things, by means of some one of its members: and even in the present day they have pursued the same line of policy--a policy which wears now, however, a more respectable garb, inasmuch as it is professedly based upon the seemingly patriotic and disinterested maxim, "_Français avant tout_," which, in declaring the revolution that caused the fall of Louis Philippe the work of the "finger of God," and in accepting a government founded upon a nation's universal suffrage, as preferable to that of a "usurping king," they have adopted as the device of chivalry, to influence every action of their lives in such a juncture. In fact, with this appearance of more straightforward patriotism, they bide their time in faith and patience, and, with a feeling almost allied to superstition, repudiate every idea of political intrigue, much more of any conspiracy against the existing order of things.