nsible for the subsequent errors of Isabella. Do you know what his
ultimatum was when the marriage had been contracted, when there was no
possibility of going back? You do not. Well, then, I will tell you. 'If
Isabella has not a child within a twelvemonth, then there will be war
between England and France.' I leave you to ponder the consequences for
yourself, though I assure you that I washed my hands of the affair from
that moment. But the French as well as the English would never believe
me, and history will record that 'the austere M. Guizot,' for that is
what they choose to call me, 'lent his aid to proceedings which would
make the most debased pander blush with shame.'

"It is not the only time that my intentions have been purposely
misconceived and misconstrued; nay, I have been taxed with things of
which I was as innocent as a child. In 1846, almost at the same period
that the Spanish imbroglio took place, Count de Montalembert got up in
the Upper House one day and declared it a disgrace that France should
have begged the tomb of Napoleon I. from Russia. Now, the fact was that
France had not begged anything at all. The principal part of the
monument at the Invalides is the sarcophagus. The architect Visconti was
anxious that it should consist of red porphyry; M. Duchatel and myself
were of the same opinion. Unfortunately, we had not the remotest notion
where such red porphyry was to be found. The Egyptian quarries, whence
the Romans took it, were exhausted. Inquiries were made in the Vosges,
in the Pyrenees, but without result, and we were going to abandon the
porphyry, when news arrived at the Ministry of the Interior that the
kind of stone we wanted existed in Russia.

"Just then my colleague, M. de Salvandy, was sending M. Leouzon le Duc
to the north on a special mission, and I instructed him to go as far as
St. Petersburg and consult Count de Rayneval, our ambassador, as to the
best means of getting the porphyry. A few months later, M. le Duc sent
me specimens of a stone from a quarry on the banks of the Onega Lake,
which, if not absolutely porphyry, was the nearest to it to be had. M.
Visconti having approved of it, I forwarded further instructions for the
quantity required, and so forth.

"The quarry, it appears, belonged to the Crown, and had never been
worked, could not be worked, without due permission and the payment of a
certain tax. After a great many formalities, mainly raised by
speculators who ha