during his exile: and, notwithstanding all that has
been said to the contrary, France wanted at that moment an ideal ruler,
not the rational father of a large family who looked upon his monarchy
as a suitable means of providing for them. He was an usurper without the
daring, the grandeur, the lawlessness of the usurper. The lesson of
Napoleon I.'s method had been thrown away upon him, as the lesson of
Napoleon III.'s has been thrown away upon his grandson. When I said
France, I made a mistake,--I should have said Paris; for since 1789
there was no longer a King of France, there was only a King of Paris.
Such a thing as a Manchester movement, as a Manchester school of
politics, would have been and is still an impossibility in France.

And, unfortunately, Paris, which had applauded the glorious
_mise-en-scene_ of the First Empire, which had even looked on
approvingly at some of the pomp and state of Louis XVIII. and Charles
X., jeered at Louis-Philippe and his court with its ridiculous
gatherings of tailors, drapers, and bootmakers, "ces gardes nationaux
d'un pays ou il n'y a plus rien de national a garder," and their
pretentious spouses "qui," according to the Duchesse de la Tremoille,
"ont plus de chemises que nos aieules avaient des robes."[40] She and
the Princesse Bagration were the only female representatives of the
Faubourg St. Germain who attended these gatherings; for the Countess Le
Hon, of whom I may have occasion to speak again, and who was the only
other woman at these receptions that could lay claim to any distinction,
was by no means an aristocrat. And be it remembered that in those days
ridicule had still the power to kill.

[Footnote 40: She had unconsciously borrowed the words from the
Duchesse de Coislin, who, under similar circumstances a few
years before, said to Madame de Chateaubriand, "Cela sent la
parvenue; nous autres, femmes de la cour, nous n'avions que
deux chemises; on les renouvelait quand elles etaient usees;
nous etions vetues de robes de soie et nous n'avions pas l'air
de grisettes comme ces demoiselles de maintenant."--EDITOR.]

Nor was the weapon wielded exclusively by the aristocracy; the lower
classes could be just as satirical against the new court element. I was
in the Tuileries gardens on that first Sunday in June, 1837, when the
Duchesse d'Orleans made her entree into Paris. The weather was
magnificent, and the set s