GRANDE SALLE DE FETES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE.

Painted by Aime-N. Morot.]

This tendency gradually became accentuated in the successive ministries
which the king called to his aid; the republican and liberal aspirations
on the one hand and the Bonapartist and Imperial souvenirs--greatly
strengthened by the imposing ceremonial attending the return of the
ashes of Napoleon to the capital in December, 1840--combined to make
difficult the task of the government. Paris, which, in the words of M.
Duruy, "loves to _fronder_ as soon as it ceases to be afraid," was
entirely given over to the opposition. At the opening of the session of
the Chambre in 1848, the ministers persuaded the king to declare in a
discourse that a hundred of the deputies were enemies of the throne. The
republicans planned a great reunion at a banquet to be given in the
twelfth arrondissement, the ministry forbade the assembly, the conflicts
began in the streets between the citizens and the soldiers, the prefet
de police, who, in his daily reports, was able to dispose of the 12th of
February in this paragraph: "Order and tranquillity continue to prevail
in Paris: no extraordinary agitation is to be observed," was obliged,
ten days later, to conclude a long account of the manifestations in the
capital by a recommendation to hold the army in readiness for an
organized attack "in case the insurrection recommences." It did
recommence, that night, and the next day Marshal Gerard announced to the
insurgents in the Palais-Royal the abdication of the king.

He abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Comte de Paris, with the
Duchesse d'Orleans for regent, and the duchess was left in the Tuileries
when the king, taking off his grand cordon and his uniform, depositing
his sword on a table, arrayed himself with his wife's assistance in a
bourgeois costume and took his departure for Saint-Cloud. The duchess,
with her two sons, was escorted to the Chamber, where the president
declared that her regency should be proclaimed by that body, and
Lamartine was in the midst of a speech advising the constitution of a
provisory government for that purpose when he was interrupted by the
invasion of a revolutionary mob shouting: "A bas la Regence! Vive la
Republique! A bas les corrompus!" The little Comte de Paris was seized
by the throat by one of these demonstrative citizens, and only saved
from being choked by the intervention of a national guardsman. The
provisional gover