I will not dwell too long on this sad period, my personal recollections of which are mingled with the events of a well-known page of our national history.

Towards the beginning of the winter of 1848 the doctors ordered my wife, who was in very delicate health, to go and spend the cold months in a southern climate, and I started with her and my children for Algiers, where I joined my brother Aumale, who had become governor-general of the colony. I arrived, weighed down with gloomy forebodings, feeling convinced that by dint of trying to respect those so-called legal restraints which paralyse a government, but which do so little to hinder any revolutionary section in its action, we should end by being overwhelmed, and by hearing the fatal hour strike, the "too late" that comes with every revolution. Yet I did not believe that hour so close at hand as it was. For I had hardly settled down at Algiers, when one fine morning the announcement of the February revolution and the proclamation of the republic came upon us like the bursting of a shell. The news arrived in the shape of vague rumours, uncertain information, reports of various kinds, brought over from Marseilles. As to the amount of authenticity they possessed—whether the movement was a general one or confined to Paris only, whether a stand was being made against it anywhere—on all these points the earliest rumours were mute, and they were just as silent as to what had befallen the King and the rest of our family, in the confusion. We were reduced to the wildest conjectures, and were wondering whether we ought not to start for France at once, when a steam corvette from Toulon brought me the following despatch:—

The Minister for Naval Affairs to Monsieur le Prince de Joinville.

28th February, 1848, 8.30 p.m.

Prince,

The well-being of the country demands that you should make no attempt to dissuade the crews or soldiers of the navy from their obedience to the Provisional Government. It is important that you should not attempt to set foot on French soil, nor communicate with any vessel in the French fleet, till further orders.

Prince, your patriotic instinct will enable you to resign yourself to this sacrifice, and to perform it unflinchingly. Such is the confident hope of the Provisional Government. ARAGO.

The signatory of this despatch had taught me in my youth, and I had kept up affectionate intercourse with him since. But the coolness with which the man (a great savant, no doubt, but who up to this had never done anything but make calculations and handle telescopes) invested himself with supreme authority amazed me. Exasperated as I was by his summons "to make no attempt to dissuade the sailors and soldiers of the navy from their obedience" to his hour-old government, in other words, from the violation of their oath which he was about to ask of all the brave fellows, I forgot both my former relations with the man and the courteous form of his despatch; and I was in a transport of rage as I handed the missive to Changarnier, commanding the troops, and M. Vaisse, the civil secretary-general, who were both of them present, in my brother's study.

"That is a summons from the enemy," I said; "we must do the very contrary."

But M. Vai'sse was silent, and Changarnier shook his head. I bethought me then, alas! that in this day of progress of ours the religion of a man's oath is but an empty word—and I recovered my self-possession.

My aide-de-camp, Commander Touchard, had come from Paris by the same corvette that had brought me the despatch. He had seen the crash, had been present when the National Guard, upon whom my brother Nemours had called to resist the rioters, had overwhelmed him with abuse, had witnessed the abdication, the scenes in the Chamber, and the King's final departure. All the way across France, too, except at Toulon, where the strong hand of the navy made itself felt, Touchard had watched the eager speculations of the majority on the accomplished fact, and the struggle as to who should first offer his services to the Provisional Government, before the corpse of Constitutional Monarchy was cold—for dead it was, without having struck a blow in its own defence.

There was no doubt about the King's personal courage. He had proved it on many battle-fields—at Valmy, Jemmapes, and Nerwinde—and under the frequent attempts made on him by would-be assassins. With courage of a rarer kind, he had never hesitated to brave unpopularity, when his doing so was clearly to the country's interest. But he had striven, being honest as well as brave, to be faithful to the institutions he had sworn to maintain, although those who opposed him had long ceased to respect the fiction of the constitution, and had become a frankly revolutionist body, which no longer directed its attack against the ministry of the day, but against the King's own person, and all that edifice on the summit of which the throne was placed.

Had he chosen to take the initiative, in order to prevent what ultimately happened, he would not have failed for want of means. When the army and the administration are in a man's hands, he can do very much as he chooses. Successive revolutions have destroyed all respect among us, except respect for main force; and it is a true saying that if strength begets respect, respect in its turn begets affection. But the King, who was the most moderate of men, would not go beyond legal limits except as a last resource. And this characteristic of his was well and universally known to all, both to friends and foes. While it discouraged the former, it to some extent encouraged the latter, and so the signal for recourse to force came from below, the pretorians of the street rose in rebellion, and the defenders of the law were everywhere overcome. In a few moments the confusion became general, and the revolution was an accomplished fact.

And yet, even so late in the day, in other countries than our own indeed, generals, and others invested with the chief command of the national troops, have been known to draw their swords and save their sovereigns and their governments almost in spite of their own selves. They have been known to maintain the tutelary and inviolable principle of a traditional monarchy—a principle which is both ancient and absolute, tracing the line of duty for all men, clear and indisputable, without any possibility of hesitation or compromise—against and in the face of all comers. And this principle is one which calls forth the proudest devotion, seeing it is impersonal, for the king is not the elected leader of conquerors, oppressing the conquered, but a living flag, the national rallying-point for all the defenders of the mother country against her enemies, whether within or without her borders.

This saving process, whether the saved ones would or no, has been seen, as I say, in other countries, which thus were preserved from that discord, disorganisation, and disaster of every kind, which are the inevitable consequence of internal convulsion and revolution.

But the July Monarchy was unhappily very far from representing the traditional hereditary principle. Born of one insurrection, it was overthrown by another. Set up on the electoral principle, it fell, as though in mockery, with a full electoral majority behind it. Two-and- twenty years later the empire too fell, on the very morrow of a triumphant plebiscite. Partial and universal suffrage alike have proved their impotence to defend a government which has ceased to give satisfaction against the assaults of that army shouting "Get out of that and let me take your place!" the members of which always make themselves up as austere patriots. And I cannot help, in this place, looking sadly back at the fatal consequences which this impotence of the elective, as compared with the monarchical regime, has had for us. Why did the Emperor refuse to treat with M. de Bismarck in the name of France, when he met him, on the evening of Sedan, and asked him to do so? Why did the unfortunate prince not do the same as two sovereigns in possession of hereditary rights and duties, Victor Emmanuel after Novara, and Francis Joseph after Sadowa, who both of them safeguarded their territory and the honour of their armies? Because he was a bastard sovereign—and dared not reappear before his electors once he was beaten.

But to return to my story, to which I have but a few lines to add. The revolution might have been foreseen and the days of the government of 1830 might have been prolonged. Once it was overthrown, and the dyke which stemmed the torrent of democracy carried away, its rule, which was one of chance convenience and not of right, had no further reason for existence.

That being so, what was I to do? The re-establishment of the legitimate family on the throne was out of the question. The disasters of our first revolutionary period had not as yet been renewed in their terrible logical sequence. We had not yet had our second Waterloo at Sedan, and very few people thought at that moment of coming back to the principle the proof of whose title lies in the centuries of unity and greatness assured by it to France—the one and only principle capable of checking her on her descent into the abyss of dismemberment, depopulation, and social destruction, down which she is gliding.

It was clear that another elective regime was about to succeed the one which had just collapsed—one of those modern edifices, all, whatever may be the name with which they are decorated, tainted with the same original weakness—"What the majority has made, the majority has the right to unmake." In fact—as somebody said in a speech—a perpetually provisional arrangement Under these ephemeral forms of rule, our national inferiority in face of other stable and far-sighted governments is flagrantly evident. The sense of duty wears away, devoted service is never given without a mental reservation touching the morrow—that unknown morrow, which checkmates the boldest plans. Thus constituted, such regimes are all alike, and it was not for the princes of the House of France to draw their swords to impose one form of national humiliation rather than another on their country.

When once my father's rule had disappeared, and with it the unvarying line of duty traced by my absolute filial devotion to him, I watched the establishment of a republican form of government without annoyance, for I preferred its clear distinctness to the complicated combinations which pretended to reconcile two opposite principles by putting handcuffs on them both.

Like many others, too, I did not doubt that the shock of revolution would soon bring on a general war. Under such circumstances, it would have been crime to add the pangs of civil strife to the dangers threatening our country.

Thenceforward, my duty lay clear before me. My country first of all! That watchword still exists, thank God, to guide those who yet can love their country whatever may befall them. When once my first fit of indignation was over, then, I did not think of returning from Africa, sword in hand, to set up the throne again. I contented myself with sending a very commonplace despatch to Arago, and then I utilised the last days I was to spend on French soil in studying the defensive works ordered by my brother in view of that war, imminent perhaps, during which, soldiers before all as we were, we expected, in the illusive hopes of our youth, to be allowed to keep our place as fighting men.

The moment came at last when our presence at Algiers became incompatible with the existence of a revolutionary government in Paris, and we had to rejoin our family in their foreign exile. We decided, Aumale and I, to embark for England on board the despatch-boat Solon, Commander Jaures. It was with heavy hearts, though proud ones, that we went down the Rue de la Marine, under the salutes of the forts, and accompanied to the last by the whole body of officers, both naval and military, so many of them our old friends and faithful comrades.

Thirty years of my life had been spent in France. In spite of the gnawing worm of revolution, my family left her intact, prosperous, respected, with magnificent armies, both land and sea, and a no less magnificent colony. I was not to see my country again for two-and-twenty years, and then in all the horror of invasion and dismemberment and the terror of the Commune.

THE END