"As Madame has courageously resolved not to abandon the country, and is rallying round her all who wish to preserve France from the misfortunes which threaten her, make known to all that they are to hold themselves ready on Sunday, 3 June, and that they arrange throughout the following night to act together, according to the directions we have given. Make very certain your orders are conveyed to everybody and to all points. "MARÉCHAL COMTE DE BOURMONT" This, then, was how things were in la Vendée when the report of the death of General Lamarque ran through Paris. It followed that of Casimir Périer by only a few days: the two strong athletes were rudely strangled during their struggles in the Tribune, which seem to have killed them both. But the soldier survived the tribune by a few days. The impression produced by these two deaths was very different: nothing could be compared with the unpopularity of the one, and the popularity of the other. This death coincided with the famous affair of the _compte rendu._ We live so fast, and the gravest events pass over so quickly, that oblivion comes as rapidly as nightfall. Not one young man of thirty knows definitely to-day what the affair of the _compte rendu_ was that we indicate was of so grave a nature. After M. Laffitte gave up the seals of power, he returned to the Opposition; this was simple enough, since it was in order to bring about an easy reaction that Louis-Philippe had banished his prime minister and his old friend. M. Laffitte's Opposition was the most Conservative imaginable from the standpoint of enlightened politics. If anything could add to the duration of the reign, condemned in advance, it was the plan expounded by him to his co-religionists on the Left: this theory, of which M. Laffitte was the High Priest, and M. Odilon Barrot the Apostle, consisted in recovering possession of power by the help of a parliamentary majority, to make the infusion of political clemency triumphant, and to make the monarchy _definitively_--the word is Louis Blanc's--guardian over liberty; a narrow but honest dream, which, compelled to tread between reaction and insurrection, could never become a reality. As for the Radical deputies, they were divided into two representative shades of opinion, the most advanced led by Garnier-Pagès, the other by M. Maugnin; their object was to renew a sort of league after the type of those of the Guises, with the object of leading the Bourbon monarchy unconsciously, in 1836 or 1837, to be what the Valois monarchy of 1585 or 1586 had been.