“The offer was a grave one. I hesitated long. Bear arms against France! For my family, it is possible; but against my country! I was greatly perplexed. At this juncture you asked me, through a trusty person, for a secret interview in a little house situated on the Cortadura, between the city and your camp. Do you remember the fact, Monsieur the Marshal?” “Perfectly, sire; the day was fixed and the interview arranged.” “And I did not turn up.” “That is so.” “Do you know why?” “I never knew.” “I will tell you. As I was preparing to go to meet you, the commander of the English squadron, apprised of the matter, I know not how, dropped upon me brusquely and warned me that I was about to fall into a trap; that Cadiz being impregnable, they despaired of seizing me, but that at the Cortadura I should be arrested by you; that the Emperor wished to make of the Duke d’Orleans a second volume of the Duke d’Enghien, and that you would have me shot immediately. There, really,” added the King with a smile, “your hand on your conscience, were you going to shoot me?” The Marshal remained silent for a moment, then replied, with a smile not less inexpressible than that of the King: “No, sire; I wanted to compromise you.” The subject of conversation was changed. A few minutes later the Marshal took leave of the King, and the King, as he watched him go, said with a smile to the person who heard this conversation: “Compromise! compromise! To-day it is called compromise. In reality, he would have shot me!” August 4, 1844. Yesterday the King said to me: “One of my embarrassments at present, in all this affair of the University and the clergy, is M. Affre.” * * Archbishop Affre was shot and killed in the Faubourg Saint Antoine on September 25, 1848, while trying to stop the fighting between the troops and insurgents. “Then why, sire,” said I, “did you appoint him?” “I made a mistake, I admit. I had at first appointed to the archbishopric of Paris the Cardinal of Arras, M. de la Tour d’Auvergne.” “It was a good choice,” I observed.