nd after their fall,
which he scarcely opposed, Charles X. found himself left to his natural
tendencies, in the midst of advisers little disposed to contradict, and
without the power of restraining him. Two fatal mistakes then
established themselves in his mind; he fancied that he was menaced by
the Revolution, much more than was really the fact; and he ceased to
believe in the possibility of defending himself, and of governing by the
legal course of the constitutional system. France had no desire for a
new revolution. The Charter contained, for a prudent and patient
monarch, certain means of exercising the royal authority and of securing
the Crown. But Charles X. had lost confidence in France and in the
Charter. When the Address of the Two Hundred and Twenty-one Deputies
came triumphant through the elections, he believed that he was driven to
his last entrenchment, and reduced to save himself without the Charter,
or to perish by a revolution.

A few days before the Decrees of July, the Russian ambassador, Count
Pozzo di Borgo, had an audience of the King. He found him seated before
his desk, with his eyes fixed on the Charter, opened at Article 14.
Charles X. read and re-read that article, seeking with honest inquietude
the interpretation he wanted to find there. In such cases, we always
discover what we are in search of; and the King's conversation, although
indirect and uncertain, left little doubt on the Ambassador's mind as to
the measures in preparation.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: "Peers of France, Deputies of Departments, I have no doubt
of your co-operation in carrying out the good measures I propose. You
will repulse with contempt the perfidious insinuations which malevolence
seeks to propagate. If criminal manoeuvres were to place obstacles in
the way of my government, which I neither can, nor wish to, foresee, I
should find the power of surmounting them in a resolution to maintain
the public peace, in the just confidence of the French people, and in
the devotion which they have always demonstrated for their King."]

[Footnote 21: I think no one who reads the six concluding paragraphs of
this Address, which alone formed the subject of debate, can fail to
appreciate, in the present day, the profound truth of the sentiments and
the apt propriety of the language.

"Assembled at your command from all points of the kingdom, we bring to
you, Sire, from every quarter, the homage of a faithful people, still
furt