took leave of the King, and the King, as he watched him go, said with a
smile to the person who heard this conversation:

"Compromise! compromise! To-day it is called compromise. In reality, he
would have shot me!"

August 4, 1844.

Yesterday the King said to me:

"One of my embarrassments at present, in all this affair of the
University and the clergy, is M. Affre." *

* Archbishop Affre was shot and killed in the Faubourg
Saint Antoine on September 25, 1848, while trying to stop
the fighting between the troops and insurgents.

"Then why, sire," said I, "did you appoint him?"

"I made a mistake, I admit. I had at first appointed to the
archbishopric of Paris the Cardinal of Arras, M. de la Tour d'Auvergne."

"It was a good choice," I observed.

"Yes, good. He is insignificant. An honest old man of no account. An
easy-going fellow. He was much sought after by the Carlists. Greatly
imposed upon. His whole family hated me. He was induced to refuse. Not
knowing what to do, and being in haste, I named M. Affre. I ought to
have been suspicious of him. His countenance is neither open nor frank.
I took his underhand air for a priestly air; I did wrong. And then, you
know, it was in 1840. Thiers proposed him to me, and urged me to appoint
him. Thiers is no judge of archbishops. I did it without sufficient
reflection. I ought to have remembered what Talleyrand said to me one
day: 'The Archbishop of Paris must always be an old man. The see is
quieter and becomes vacant more frequently.' I appointed M. Affre, who
is young; it was a mistake. However, I will re-establish the chapter
of St. Denis and appoint as primate of it the Cardinal de la Tour
d'Auvergne. The Papal Nuncio, to whom I spoke of my project just now,
laughed heartily at it, and said: 'The Abbe Affre will commit some
folly. Should he go to Rome the Pope will receive him very badly. He
has acted pusillanimously and blunderingly on all occasions since he has
been an archbishop. An archbishop of Paris who has any wit ought always
to be on good terms with the King here and the Pope yonder.'"

August, 1844.

A month or two ago the King went to Dreux. It was the anniversary of
the death of the Duke d'Orleans. The King had chosen this day to put the
coffins of his relatives in the family vault in order.

Among the number was a coffin that contained all the bones of the
princes of the House of Orleans that the Duchess d'Orleans, mot