“Dreadful rumours of revolt and massacre were circulated on all sides, and the family of the Duke of Orleans were not without alarm for the very life of its chief. The moment, then, was come at last—the moment to decide. Charles X. was taking, without resistance, the road to a new exile. From that quarter, then, all danger ceased. The deputies, now gathered together in sufficient number to deliberate, had come to offer the crown to the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. M. de Talleyrand was consulted at this crisis, and he it was who caused the faint resistance of Louis Philippe to cease, and induced him to place upon his brow the crown offered by the people, and he it was whose opinion decided the king to go at once to the Hôtel de Ville, there to receive publicly the sceptre of France, and to swear allegiance to the Charter. This truth may be relied on; and, moreover, M. de Talleyrand, in order to give to the new power the sanction of his old experience, appeared at the public reception of the Palais Royal for the first time since the revolution. “Such was the part played by M. de Talleyrand in the revolution of 1830. Immense it was, if judged by its results, but neither studied beforehand nor rehearsed, as it has been so often unjustly asserted since that day. This part, indeed, was so entirely _impromptu_, that many persons of the intimate circle of the prince know that, more than once, M. de Talleyrand has let fall a regret that Charles, in his blind folly, should have destroyed in three days the whole fabric of the Restoration, which had been looked upon by all Europe as the masterpiece of Talleyrand’s diplomatic works. The weakness of seigneurial pride, too, the only one which I think he ever possessed, will sometimes cause him to sigh over the wreck of that principle of legitimacy which he had been at so much pains to re-establish in favour of the Bourbons, a principle which he still considers necessary to the repose of the country, perhaps compromised for many generations by the events of the three glorious days. The lesson which such regrets imply, conveys, to the thinking mind, its own moral.” CHAPTER III. SEIZURE AND CONFINEMENT OF THE SPANISH PRINCES AT VALENÇAY. While my friend had been thus discoursing of kings and revolutions, we had, after crossing a part of the park, turned in the court-yard, where stood the stables. I knew that the prince cared but little for his stud; I was surprised, therefore, when C. pulled the cord of the huge bell which hung at the entrance. At the sound, the groom, who was standing in the court, evidently knowing for what purpose he was summoned, flung back the wide doors of an outhouse near the gate. “It is fit,” said C., laughing, “that, as our discourse is all of chance and change, of fallen kings and falling governments, we should now behold the very type of these: although, fallen and faded as it is, it may be regarded as the great lion of Valençay.”