London was frequently visited by him, and he became an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. He infected young France with Anglomania in the form of horse-racing and hard drinking, and made himself popular among the lower classes by profuse charity. In 1787 he showed his liberalism boldly against the King, and as the States-General drew near he lavished his wealth in flooding France with seditious books and papers. In the following year he promulgated his _Délibérations_, written by Laclos, to the effect that the Third Estate was the nation; and in June, 1789--the month that preceded the fall of the Bastille--he led the forty-seven nobles who seceded from their own order to join that Estate. The Duke presumed to become constitutional King of France, or at least Regent; but he was only a comparatively small fragment that drifted into the vortex of the Revolution itself. In 1792, when all hereditary titles were swept away, this “citizen” adopted the name of Philippe Égalité. He was the twentieth Deputy for Paris in the National Convention, and voted for the death of the King; but in the following year retribution overtook him, for he himself was found guilty of conspiracy and guillotined. The public distrust of the King’s party, the fatal error in bringing the foreign troops to Paris and its environs, and, finally, the banishment of Necker and the Duke of Orléans, the great champions of the people, must be regarded as the immediate cause of the catastrophe that followed. CHAPTER VI Madame Tussaud recalled from Versailles--The 12th of July, 1789--Busts taken from Curtius’s Exhibition--A Garde Française slain in the mêlée. It must be remembered that the “romance” of Madame Tussaud’s began in the French capital one hundred and fifty years ago. As we view to-day the quaint little figure of Madame which stands in the Exhibition she helped to found in France and established in this country, we must imagine her in the full vigour of her young womanhood, sensible to the dangers and terrors of the Revolution in which she was about to be involved. The Exhibition was as yet in its infancy; but stirring times were approaching, and the days were pregnant with meaning for the France that was to be--a time of bloodshed and grim ruthlessness born of a people’s desire for freedom, and attended by ghastly scenes in Paris that revealed the extremities to which unbridled human passions could go. We must see through her eyes the sights that marked the red dawn of the French Revolution; and hear the first low rumble that gave warning of the approach of the Reign of Terror. Her uncle recalled her from the Court of Versailles, an order that he might afford her his protection, and she did not leave a whit too soon. Now we come to the fateful days of July.