"Ah! Monsieur le Duc," the aged monarch exclaimed, "you refuse, then, to save my life and that of my Ministers? That is not the part of a faithful subject, monsieur!" The duke bowed. "Sire," he said, "if that is what you demand of me, I will accept!" "Good--I thank you," replied the king. Then, in a whisper-- "But it remains to be seen if the people will be satisfied with you...." The violent measures imposed upon the old king were so bitter to him, that, even before the man who had been willing to sacrifice himself for his sake, he could not restrain his anger. Three political personages were waiting in an adjacent room--thus, in our polite tongue, we speak of peers, deputies, senators, magistrates and councillors who take the oath of allegiance to monarchies, and who defend them so well, that, in forty years, they have allowed four to slip through their fingers! These political personages were M. de Vitrolles,--whom Doctor Thibaut had gone to look for on the evening of 27 July, to lay before him the Coalition,--Mortemart and Gérard; M. de Sémonville, the man of apocryphal flags, of whom M. de Talleyrand said, when he saw him falling away, "What interest can he take in that?" M. d'Argout who, in 1848, became so ardent a Republican that he dismissed from his offices my beloved and close friend Lassagne, who had obtained with him a small post at three to four thousand francs salary, because he recognised him as having been secretary to King Louis-Philippe. "O holy discretion!" as said Brutus. While they were waiting, M. de Polignac entered. The prince soon guessed what the three negotiators had come about; two of them were personal friends of his. They had come to ask for his dethronement. There was a greatness about the Prince de Polignac; a smaller-minded man would have attempted to prevent them gaining access to the king; but he at once introduced them into Charles X.'s cabinet. Perhaps he also reckoned upon the king's well-known aversion towards M. d'Argout. The king had just agreed to the Ministry of Mortemart. He received these gentlemen, who laid their mission before him. Charles X. did not even let them get to the end but, with a gesture at once full of bitterness and of nobility, he said-- "Gentlemen, go to the Parisians and tell them that the king revokes the Ordinances." These gentlemen gave vent to the expression of their joy in murmurs of satisfaction. But the king went on to say-- "Allow me, at the same time, to tell you that I believe this revocation to be fatal to the interests of the Monarchy and of France!" The interests of Monarchy and of France! Why on earth did Charles X. talk of these to such men? What did they care for beyond their own private interests? They departed in a carriage at full gallop. Upon the road they met all Paris in arms pouring out of the houses into the streets and from out the suburbs. M. de Sémonville shouted to that crowd of bare-armed men with bloodstained shirts--