st son to the public school, as if to
insinuate that he remained faithful to the ideas of equality from which
his father had gained his surname. He made very welcome the coryphees
of the Opposition, such as General Foy and M. Laffitte, to the Palais
Royal, and received them in halls where the brush of Horace Vernet had
represented the great battles of the tricolor flag. When General Foy
died, in November, 1825, the Duke of Orleans put his name for ten
thousand francs to the subscription opened to provide a fund for the
children of the General. Some friendly representations were made from
the Chateau to the Palais Royal on this matter. It was answered that
the Duke of Orleans had subscribed not as Prince, but as a friend, and
in private called attention to the modesty of the gift compared with
others, with that of M. Casimir Perier, for example, which amounted to
fifty thousand francs. This excuse was satisfactory at the Tuileries.

Is this saying that Louis-Philippe was already at this time thinking of
dethroning his benefactor, his relative, and his King? We think not. He
profited by the errors of Charles X.; but if Charles X. had not
committed them, the idea of usurpation would not have occurred to the
mind of the chief of the younger branch. Men are not so profoundly good
or so profoundly wicked. They let themselves be carried further than
they wish, and if the acts they are to commit some day were foretold
them, the prophecies would most often seem to them as impossible as
insulting.

Madame de Gontaut, Governess of the Children of France, recounts an
incident that took place at the Louvre, December 22d, 1824, at the
opening of the session of the Chambers: "The crowd was prodigious. The
Dauphiness and the Duchess of Berry and Mademoiselle d'Orleans were
present in one of the bays. The Children of France were there. The
Duchess of Berry took the Duke of Bordeaux by her side. The Duchess of
Orleans called Mademoiselle, whom she loved tenderly, to her. The canon
announced the approach of the King. At the moment of his appearance the
hall resounded with acclamations. The platform for the royal family was
the one prepared for the late King; there had been left a slight
elevation in it, that the King did not see, and he stumbled on it. With
the movement his hat, held on his arm, fell; the Duke of Orleans caught
it. The Duchess of Orleans said to me:--

"'The King was about to fall; my husband sustained him.'

"I answe