. The
new system was defined as the "Provisionary Consulate;" but this form
was only transitional. The managers of the _coup_ went rapidly forward
to make it permanent. The Constitution of the Year III gave place
quickly to the Constitution of the Year VIII, which provided for an
executive government, under the name of the CONSULATE. Nominally the
Consulate was to be an executive committee of three, but really an
executive committee of _one_--with two associates. The three men
chosen were Napoleon Bonaparte, Jean Jacques Cambaceres and Charles
Francois Lebrun. On Christmas day, 1799, Napoleon was made FIRST
CONSUL; and that signified the beginning of a new order, destined to
endure for sixteen and a half years, and to end at Waterloo. The old
century was dying and the new was ready to arise out of its ashes.

HOW THE SON OF EQUALITY BECAME KING OF FRANCE.

The French Revolution spared not anything that stood in its way. The
royal houses were in its way, and they went down before the blast.
Thus did the House of Bourbon, and thus did also the House of Orleans.
The latter branch, however, sought by its living representatives to
compromise with the storm. The Orleans princes have always had a touch
of liberalism to which the members of the Bourbon branch were
strangers.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of
Orleans, fraternized with the popular party, threw away his princely
title and named himself Philippe Egalite; that is, as we should say,
Mr. _Equality_ Philip. In this character he participated in the
National Assembly until he fell under distrust, and in despite of his
defence and protestations--in spite of the fact that he had voted for
the death of his cousin the king--was seized, condemned and
guillotined.

This Equality Philip left as his representative in the world a son who
was twenty years old when his father was executed. The son was that
Louis Philippe who, under his surname of _Roi Citoyen_, or "Citizen
King," was destined after extraordinary vicissitudes to hold the
sceptre of France for eighteen years. Young Louis Philippe was a
soldier in the republican armies. That might well have saved him from
persecution; but his princely blood could not be excused. He was by
birth the Duke of Valois, and by succession the Duke of Chartres. As
a boy, eight years of age, he had received for his governess the
celebrated Madame de Genlis, who remained faithful to him in all his
misfor