Casimir Périer bowed lightly and followed the king. But thanks to the new command, everything was changed. The queen was gracious; Madame Adélaïde was affable; M. le duc d'Orléans had turned round, the aides-de-camp stood in a group ready to obey at the least sign from the king, and also from the minister; the courtiers smiled obsequiously. Finally, the lackeys, when M. Périer reached the door, flew into the ante-chambers and rushed down the stairs crying, "M. le president du Conseil's carriage!" A more rapid and startling reparation could not possibly have been obtained. Thus Casimir Périer remained a minister, and the new president of the council then started that arduous career which was to end in the grave in a year's time; he died only a few weeks before his antagonist Lamarque. This was how matters stood when we took a fresh course, in the full tide of the trial of the artillery, to speak of M. Laffitte. But, once for all, we are not writing history, only jotting down our recollections, and often we find that at the very moment when we have galloped off to follow up some byway of our memory we have left behind us events of the first importance. We are then obliged to retrace our steps, to make our apologies to those events, as the king had to do to M. Casimir Périer; to take them, as it were, by the hand, and to lead them back to our readers, who perhaps do not always accord them quite such a gracious reception as that which the Court of the Palais-Royal gave to the President of the Council on the evening of 14 March 1831. CHAPTER IV Trial of the artillerymen--Procureur-général Miller--Pescheux d'Herbinville--Godefroy Cavaignac--Acquittal of the accused--The ovation they received--Commissioner Gourdin--The cross of July--The red and black ribbon--Final rehearsals of _Antony_ We have mentioned what a difficult matter it was for a solicitor-general to prosecute the men who were still black from the powder of July, such men as Trélat, Cavaignac, Guinard, Sambuc, Danton, Chaparre and their fellow-prisoners. All these men, moreover (except Commissioner Gourdin, against whose morality, by the way, there was absolutely nothing to be said), lived by their private fortune or their own talents, and were, for the most part, more of them well to do than poorly off. They could therefore only be proceeded against on account of an opinion regarded as dangerous from the point of view of the Government, though they were undoubtedly disinterested. Miller, the solicitor-general, had the wit to grasp the situation, and at the outset of his charge against the prisoners he turned to the accused and said--