Louis-Philippe as a private individual, Louis-Philippe as politician and Louis-Philippe as king, are all faithfully depicted by his own hand in that note and that rough draft of a letter. But the date of 31 July puzzles us, especially after the lapse of twenty-two years. Is it an error of the duke's, or was the note not signed until after midnight?--this would make the date of the 31st correct; or, again, as is just conceivably possible, was it signed only on the evening of the 31st? Our own opinion is that it was signed on the morning of the 31st, between one and two o'clock, after midnight. And we base our opinion on the fact that, at one o'clock in the morning M. Laffitte had not yet been informed of the arrival of the Duc d'Orléans. Besides, the salons of the illustrious banker, deserted little by little by those whom the silence and absence of the Duc d'Orléans rendered anxious, kept on thinning in a manner far from re-assuring. At two o'clock in the morning, indeed, no one was left in the salon but Laffitte and Benjamin Constant. Béranger had just retired, worn out with fatigue. "Well!" Laffitte remarked with his accustomed imperturbability, "what do you think of the situation, Constant?" "I?" the author of _Adolphe_ laughingly replied. "Well, my dear Laffitte, it is a hundred chances to one that by to-morrow at this hour we shall be hung." Laffitte made a gesture. "Ah! I quite understand that. You are not madly in love with hanging; it would spoil your pretty pink face and your well-groomed hair and your perfectly adjusted cravat; while I, with my long yellow face, look as though I had been hanged already, and the cord would add little to my physiognomy." With this compliment, the two men separated at half-past two in the morning. It was only at five that they waked M. Laffitte to warn him of the arrival of the Duc d'Orléans in Paris. "Oh!" said he, "Benjamin Constant is distinctly wrong, and we shall not be hanged." Now, at eight o'clock in the morning the deputation from the Chamber, which had presented itself at Neuilly the previous day, appeared at the Palais-Royal, headed by General Sébastiani. He was the very same general who, on 29 July, said, "Beware lest you go too far, gentlemen ... we are merely negotiating, and our part is that of mediators, we are not even deputies!"--the same who, on the 30th, said, "The only national thing in France is the white flag!"--again, on the 31st, "Go, Monsieur Thiers, and try to persuade the Duc d'Orléans to accept the crown!" and, again, on I August, "Gentlemen, tell the whole world that the name of the King of France is now Philippe VII.!" In a word, he who later was to say, "Order reigns at Warsaw!" Nor let us forget that it was this same General Sébastiani who, on my first visit to Paris, received me with four secretaries, each stationed in the four corners of his room ready to offer him snuff out of a gold snuff-box.