[Footnote AK: Charles X. abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux, a child seven or eight years old. Should that child die, the Duke of Orleans would be the _legitimate_ Bourbon candidate for the throne.] "My reply is short. Let France preserve peace and liberty with that family. Let such become the _national will legitimately expressed_, and the conduct of the sixty-two Deputies, who have called the second branch of the House of Bourbon to power, will no longer be discussed by any one. Will this be done? Time alone can tell us. "The portion of your letter in which you speak of the Napoleonic system as impressed with despotism and aristocracy merits, on my part, a more detailed response. While I render justice to your good intentions, I can not but deplore the situation in which you found yourself when released from the prisons of Austria. That imprisonment did not permit you to judge the influence exerted upon the national opinion and character by the wretched Reign of Terror. You had only seen the liberal system of America, and you have condemned the all-powerful man who did not transfer that system to France. I remember that one day my brother, in coming from an interview with you, my dear general, said to me these words: "'I have just had a very interesting conversation with the Marquis de la Fayette upon the subject of the disorderly persons whom the police have sent from Paris. I have said to him that this was done that they might not disturb the tranquillity of good men like himself, whose residence in France appeared to them one of my crimes.[AL] The Marquis de la Fayette does not know the character of these people in whom he interests himself. He was in the prisons of despotism when these people made all France to tremble. But France remembers this too well. We are not here in America.' [Footnote AL: The Jacobins wished all whom they termed aristocrats guillotined or expelled from France.] "Napoleon never doubted your good intentions. But he thought that you judged too favorably of your contemporaries. He was forced into war by the English, and into the dictatorship by the war. These few words are the history of the Empire. Napoleon incessantly said to me, 'When will peace arrive? Then only can I satisfy all, and show myself as I am.' "The aristocracy of which you accuse him was only the mode of placing himself in harmony with Europe. But the old feudal aristocracy was never in his favor. The proof of this is that he was its victim, and that he expiated, at Saint Helena, the crime of having wished to employ all the institutions in favor of the people; and the European aristocracy contrived to turn against him even those very masses for whose benefit he was laboring. The French nation renders him justice; and the European masses will not be slow to say that Napoleon had ever in view the suffrage of posterity, whose verdict is always in favor of him who has only in view the happiness of his country."