time, his
thoughts, his energies, to the pleasures of the chase. This pursuit
became, not his recreation, but the serious occupation of his life.

Charles was the father of two sons. The eldest, and consequently the
heir to the crown, was the Duke d'Angouleme. He had married the
daughter of Louis XVI., whose sufferings, with her brother, the
dauphin, in the Temple, have moved the sympathies of the whole
civilized world. The duke and duchess were childless, and with no
hope of offspring.

His second son, the Duke de Berri, had been assassinated, as we have
mentioned, about four years before, as he was coming from the opera,
leaving his wife _enciente_. In the course of a few months she gave
birth to a son--the Duke of Bordeaux. This child--now called Count de
Chambord--was the legitimate heir to the throne, next to his uncle,
the Duke d'Angouleme.

Six years of the reign of Charles X. passed away, during which the
discontent of the people was continually making itself increasingly
manifest. They regarded the Government as false to the claims of the
masses, and devoted only to the interests of the aristocracy.

The spirit of discontent which had long been brooding now rose in
loud and angry clamor everywhere around the throne. The court was
blind to its peril; but thoughtful men perceived that the elements
for a moral earthquake were fast accumulating. In the midst of these
hourly increasing perils, the Duke of Orleans, on the 31st of May,
1830, gave a ball at the Palais Royal in honor of his father-in-law,
the King of Naples. This festival was of such splendor as to astonish
even splendor-loving Paris, and was long remembered as one of the
most brilliant entertainments the metropolis had ever witnessed. The
immense fortune of the duke, his refined taste, and the grandeur of
the saloons of his ancestral palace, enabled him almost to outvie
royalty itself in the brilliance of the fete.

Vast amphitheatres bloomed with flowers in Eden-like profusion. The
immense colonnades of the Palais Royal were crowded with
orange-trees, whose opening buds filled the air with fragrance, and
whose clusters of golden fruit enhanced the beauty of the scene. The
spacious roofs and rotundas of glass sparkled with thousands of
wax-lights, creating a spectacle so gorgeous and glittering that even
those who were accustomed to royal splendor were reminded of the
enchanter's palace in Oriental fable.

The marriage of the Duke de Berri, the