I have said a hundred times and I repeat again, the old society is dying. I am not easy-going enough, nor quack enough, nor sufficiently deceived by my hopes to take the smallest interest in that which exists. France, the ripest of the present nations, will probably be the first to go. It is likely that the Elder Bourbons, to whom I shall die attached, would not even to-day find a lasting shelter in the Old Monarchy. Never have the successors of an immolated monarch worn his torn mantle long after him: there is distrust on both sides; the prince dares not rely upon the nation, the nation refuses to believe that the reinstated family is capable of forgiving it. A scaffold raised between a people and a king prevents them from seeing each other: there are tombs that never close. Capet's head was so high that the little executioners were obliged to strike it off to take its crown, even as the Caribbees used to cut down the palm-tree in order to gather its fruit. The stem of the Bourbons had propagated itself in the different trunks which, bending down, took root and rose again as haughty shoots; that family, after being the pride of the other royal Houses, seems to have become their fatality. [Illustration: Louis Philippe.] [Sidenote: Prospects of the Usurpation.] But would it be more reasonable to think that the descendants of Philip would have more chances of reigning than the young heir of Henry IV.? It is vain to contrive different combinations of political ideas: the moral verities remain unchangeable. There are inevitable reactions, instructive, magisterial, avenging. The Monarch who initiated us into liberty, Louis XVI., was made to expiate in his own person the despotism of Louis XIV. and the corruption of Louis XV.: and shall it be said that Louis-Philippe, he or his line, shall not pay the debt of the depravity, of the Regency? Was that debt not contracted anew by "Égalité" at the scaffold of Louis XVI., and did Philip his son not increase the paternal contract when, a faithless guardian, he dethroned his ward? "Égalité" redeemed nothing by losing his life; the tears shed with the last breath redeem nobody: they only wet the breast and do not fall upon the conscience. If the Orleans Branch were able to reign by the right of the vices and crimes of its ancestors, where, then, would Providence be? Never would a more terrible temptation have disquieted the good man. What deludes us is that we measure the designs of Eternity by the scale of our short life. We pass away so quickly that God's punishment cannot always fall within the short moment of our existence: the punishment descends when the time comes; it no longer finds the original culprit, but it finds his House, which leaves room for action.