rising."--"Very
well," resumes Charles X.; "go and consult your colleagues, and return
after the soiree that I shall attend with the Duchess of Berry."

This soiree is a concert given by the Duchess at the Tuileries. The
music is but little heard. The incidents of the review are the subject
of all conversation. The courtiers wonder whether, to please the King,
they should take a dark or a rose-colored view of things. The optimists
and pessimists exchange impressions. Charles X. seems to lean to the
former. "Apparently," he says, with his habitual bonhomie, "my bad ear
has done me a friendly service, and I am glad of it, for I protest I
heard no insults." Plainly it costs the sovereign pain to dismiss the
National Guard. It gave him so brilliant a welcome in 1814. He was its
generalissimo under the reign of Louis XVIII. He has liked to wear its
uniform, the blue coat with broad fringes of silver that becomes him so
well. But the ministers, except the Duke of Doudeauville and M. de
Chabrol, pronounce strongly in favor of disbandment. Their idea
prevails. After the concert Charles X. signs the decree, which appears
in the Moniteur on the morrow, and is enforced without resistance. "The
King can do anything!" cries the Duke de Riviere, with enthusiasm; and
May 6th M. de Villele addresses to the Prince de Polignac, then
ambassador at London, a letter in which he says: "The dissolution of
the National Guard has been a complete success; the bad have been
confounded by it, the good encouraged. Paris has never been more calm
than since this act of severity, justice, and vigor." The monarchy
thinks itself saved; it is lost.

XXI

THE FIRST DISQUIETUDE

There were still great illusions among those about Charles X., and the
Duchess of Berry had not for a single instant an idea that the rights
of her son could be compromised. They persuaded themselves that the
Opposition would remain dynastic and that the severest crises would end
only in a change of ministry. Nevertheless, even at the court, the more
thoughtful began to be anxious, and perceived many dark points on the
horizon. Certain royalists, enlightened by experience of the Emigration
and Exile, had a presentiment that the Restoration would be for them
only a halt in the long way of catastrophes and sorrow. They mourned
the optimist tranquillity in which some of the courtiers succeeded in
lulling the King. There were courageous and faithful servitors who, at
the r