silence reigns about the altar and
over all the Place; a common sorrow overwhelms the people; the King's
eyes are filled with tears."

In this multitude the absence of the Dauphiness, the daughter of Louis
XVI., is remarked. The Orphan of the Temple had made it a law for
herself never to cross the place where her father had perished. She
went to the expiatory chapel of the Rue d'Anjou-Saint-Honore, to pass
in prayer the time of the ceremony.

M. de Vaulabelle makes this curious comparison:--

"Behind Charles X. there knelt his Grand Chamberlain, Prince
Talleyrand, covered with gleaming embroideries, orders, and cordons. It
was the ecclesiastical dignitary whom Paris had beheld celebrating the
Mass of the Federation on the Champ-de-Mars, the wedded prelate who, as
Minister of the Directory, had for some years observed as a national
festival the anniversary of this same execution, now the subject of so
many tears."

Religious people rejoiced at the ceremony that was celebrated; but the
Voltairians and the enemies of royalty complained bitterly at the sight
of the quays, the streets, the squares of the capital furrowed by long
files of priests, chanting psalms and litanies, dragging devout in
their suite the King, the two Chambers, the judiciary, the
administration, and the army. Yet was it not just that Charles X.
should cause an expiatory ceremony to be celebrated at the place where
his unfortunate brother had been guillotined? Was not that for a pious
sovereign the accomplishment of a sacred duty? It matters not; there
were those who reproached him with this homage to the most memorable of
misfortunes. They would have forbidden to Charles X. the memory of
Louis XVI. Yet a king could hardly be asked to have the sentiments of a
conventionnel, of a regicide. In their systematic and bitter
opposition, the adversaries of the Restoration imputed to the royal
family as a crime its very virtues and its piety.

Charles X. was not unaware of this half-expressed hostility. That
evening he wrote to M. Villele, President of the Council of Ministers:--

"In general I have been content with the ceremony and the appearance of
the people; but I wish to know the whole truth, and I charge you to see
M. Delavau, and to know from him if the reality corresponds to
appearances, if there was any talk against the government and the
clergy. I wish to know all, and I trust to you to leave me in ignorance
of nothing."

M. de Villele was n