It was because I was both a poet and a Republican, and already comprehended and maintained, contrary to certain narrow-minded people of our party, that France, even though democratic, did not date from '89 only; that we nineteenth century men had received a vast inheritance of glory and must preserve it; that the fleurs-de-lis meant the lance heads of Clovis, and the javelins of Charlemagne; that they had floated successively at Tolbiac, at Tours, at Bouvines, at Taillebourg, at Rosbecque, at Patay, at Fornovo, Ravenna, Marignan, Renty, Arques, Rocroy, Steinkerque, Almanza, Fontenoy, upon the seas of India and the lakes of America; that, after the success of fifty victories, we suffered the glory of a score of defeats which would have been enough to annihilate another nation; that the Romans invaded us, and we drove them out, the Franks too, who were also expelled; the English invaded us, and we drove them out. The opinion I am now putting forth with respect to the erasing of the fleurs-de-lis, which I upheld very conspicuously at that time by my resignation, was also the opinion of Casimir Périer. The next day after the fleurs-de-lis had disappeared from the king's carriages, from the balconies of the Palais-Royal and even from Bayard's shield, whilst the effigy of Henry IV. was preserved on the Cross of the Legion of Honours; M. Chambolle, who has since started the Orleanist paper, _l'Ordre_, called at M. Casimir Périer's house. "Why," the latter asked him, "in the name of goodness, does the king give up his armorial bearings? Ah! He would not do it after the Revolution, when I advised him to sacrifice them; no, he would not hear of their being effaced then, and stuck to them more tenaciously than did his elders. Now, the riot has but to pass under his windows and behold his escutcheon lies in the gutter!" Those who knew what an irascible character Casimir Périer was, will not be surprised at the flowers of rhetoric with which those words are adorned. But now that there is no longer an archbishop's palace, nor any fleurs-de-lis, and the statue of the Duc de Berry about to be knocked down at Lille, the seminary of Perpignan pillaged and the busts of Louis XVIII. and of Charles X. of Nîmes destroyed, let us return to _Antony_, which was to cause a great disturbance in literature, besides which the riots we have just been discussing were but as the holiday games of school children. [1] We are compelled to admit that, in our opinion, the parallel between La Fayette and the Duc de Rovigo is to the disadvantage of the latter; but how far he is above them in comparing him with other men of the empire! La Fayette's love for liberty is sublime; the devotion of the Duc de Rovigo for Napoléon is worthy of respect, for all devotion is a fine and rare thing, as times go. CHAPTER III