was more
agreeable to her than a reunion at the Chateau d'Eu, where Mademoiselle
was always happy, playing with her young cousins.

The Duchess of Berry and her daughter returned to Saint Cloud the 16th
of September, 1829. On leaving, Mademoiselle said to the Dieppois: "My
friends, I will come back next year, and I will bring you my brother."
Neither she nor her mother was to return.

XXVIII

THE PRINCE DE POLIGNAC

At the very moment that the Duchess of Berry, happy and smiling, was
tranquilly taking the sea-baths at Dieppe, an event occurred at Paris
that was the signal for catastrophes. The 9th of August, 1829, the
Moniteur published the decree constituting the cabinet, in which were
included the Prince de Polignac as Minister of Foreign Affairs; Count
de La Bourdonnaye as Minister of the Interior; and as Minister of War,
the General Count de Bourmont. The next day the Debats said:--

"So here is once more broken the bond of love and confidence that was
uniting the people to the Monarch. Here once again are the court with
its old rancors, the Emigration with its prejudices, the priesthood
with its hatred of liberty, coming to throw themselves between France
and her King. What she has conquered by forty years of travail and
misfortune is taken from her; what she repels with all the force of her
will, all the energy of her deepest desires, is violently imposed upon
her. Ill-fated France! Ill-fated King!"

The 15th of August the Debats reached a paroxysm of fury:--

"If from all the battle-fields of Europe where our Grand Army has left
its members, if from Belgium, where it left the last fragments of its
body, and from the place where Marshal Ney fell shot, there arise cries
of anger that resound in our hearts, if the column of the Grand Army
seems to tremble through all its bronze battalions, whose is the fault?
No, no; nothing is lacking in this ministry of the counter-Revolution.
Waterloo is represented. ... M. de Polignac represents in it the ideas
of the first Emigration, the ideas of Coblenz; M. de La Bourdonnaye the
faction of 1815 with its murderous friendships, its law of
proscription, and its clientele of southern massacres. Coblenz,
Waterloo, 1815, these are the three personages of the ministry. Turn it
how you will, every side dismays. Every side angers. It has no aspect
that is not sinister, no face that is not menacing. Take our hatreds of
thirty years ago, our sorrows and our fears of fif