,
his standing, and his services, had been appointed a chevalier de St.
Louis as a matter of right; but at the moment of his reception, the
cross was taken from him with ignominy, because he had been so
unfortunate as to vote for the death of the King twenty years before.

Louis XVIII., when he returned to France, had promised that he would
not inquire into the votes which had been given against his august
brother. This promise, which had been demanded from him, and which he
ratified by his charter, could not be otherwise than a painful victory
over the feelings of his heart. He must have grieved when he found
himself under the necessity of admitting those judges into his court,
who had condemned Louis XVI. to the scaffold, and to present them to
the daughter of the murdered monarch. But still he had sworn not to
avenge his death, and the oaths by which a monarch binds himself to
his people should be inviolable.

All resentment was to be repressed. The voters had been pardoned, and
therefore the government could not be justified in reviving the memory
of their crime, and in bringing down vengeance and death upon their
heads. A funeral veil ought to have been drawn over that period of our
revolution, during which we were all equally misled or guilty.
Besides, we must state plainly and distinctly, that the grief excited
by the murder of Louis XVI., was not the true cause of the invectives
with which the regicides were assailed by the emigrants. Unfortunately
the effect produced at Coblentz by the trial and execution of the
king, is too well known. If the errors of some of the men of the
revolution were hunted out with so much malignant zeal, it was only
for the purpose of coming to this result--that as the revolution was
the work of crime, it was necessary to root out every thing which had
proceeded from the revolution.

The insult to which General Milhaud was subjected, was therefore
rather a political movement, than a punishment inflicted on an
individual. In selecting Milhaud as the object of the first assault
against the regicides, the government gave a proof of their want of
tact; for if they wanted to render the regicides contemptible or
odious, they should have avoided attacking an officer who had long
since washed away the stains of the blood of his King, by imbruing
himself in the blood of our enemies!

But whilst the military, from the highest to the lowest, were exposed
to the persecution and tyranny of th