It now only remained for him to conquer the Hôtel de Ville. Oh! but that was quite another matter! The Hôtel de Ville was not the palace, spoilt by the orgies of the Directory or the proscriptions of 1815; it was not a factory where ambition and cupidity were forged, under the disguise of devotion to the various powers which succeeded one another for half a century. No, indeed; the Hôtel de Ville was the stronghold of shelter for that great popular goddess termed Revolution, during each fresh insurrection. And the spirit of Revolution again held sway there. Power had come to the Duc d'Orléans; but, before that power could be established, the duke had to come to the Revolution. Her representative was an old man, true-hearted and clean-souled, but enfeebled with age. Forty years before, when in the full tide of youth, he had been found wanting at a time of Revolution: would they find what they had vainly looked for at thirty, now he was seventy years of age? Yes, perhaps, had he stood alone and free to exercise his own convictions; for, since the former devotion to the cause of royalty, he had thought and suffered much; he had known imprisonment and exile; his name had been uttered in every Republican conspiracy, at Béfort and Saumur; and we will describe later under what singular circumstances he escaped proscription with Dermoncourt and execution with Berton. But he was no longer a free agent. One party, the Orléanists, had circumvented him; it was, in fact, quite a siege, cleverly conceived by Laffitte and carried out by Carbonnel. From hence arose that pregnant saying of Bonnelier: "Vos diables de républicains nous ont donné bien du mal!" ("Your republican devils have done us no end of harm!") Indeed, it was only with difficulty that republicans gained access to the good old general. They could easily be known, since their number, at the period of which I am speaking, was small, and hardly had one or other of these men come to see him before some one would come in and, under various pretexts, either cut the conversation short or act as a spy. This was the man with whom the Duc d'Orléans had to deal, and an easy task it was to the prince, who, when he liked, could be most seductively fascinating. Still, the future king wished to be accompanied by a deputation from the Chamber. The Chamber would sooner have sent two deputations than one, and, had the duke expressed the wish, it would have brought up the rear of the procession in a body.