Louis XVIII, Lafayette pronounced to be the falsest man he had ever met with; to use his own expression, “l’homme le plus faux.”  He gave him credit for a great deal of talent, but added that his duplicity was innate, and not the result of his position, for it was known to his young associates, in early youth, and that they used to say among themselves, as young men, and in their ordinary gaieties, that it would be unsafe to confide in the Comte de Provence.

Of Charles X he spoke kindly, giving him exactly a different character.  He thought him the most honest of the three brothers, though quite unequal to the crisis in which he had been called to reign.  He believed him sincere in his religious professions, and thought the charge of his being a professed Jesuit by no means improbable.

Marie Antoinette he thought an injured woman.  On the subject of her reputed gallantries he spoke cautiously, premising that, as an American, I ought to make many allowances for a state of society, that was altogether unknown in our country.  Treating this matter with the discrimination of a man of the world, and the delicacy of a gentleman, he added that he entirely exonerated her from all of the coarse charges that had proceeded from vulgar clamour, while he admitted that she had betrayed a partiality for a young Swede[1] that was, at least, indiscreet for one in her situation, though he had no reason to believe her attachment had led her to the length of criminality.

[Footnote 1:  A Count Koningsmarke.]

I asked his opinion concerning the legitimacy of the Duc de Bordeaux, but he treated the rumour to the contrary, as one of those miserable devices to which men resort to effect the ends of party, and as altogether unworthy of serious attention.

I was amused with the simplicity with which he spoke of his own efforts to produce a change of government, during the last reign.  On this subject he had been equally frank even before the recent revolution, though there would have been a manifest impropriety in my repeating what had then passed between us.  This objection is now removed in part, and I may recount one of his anecdotes, though I can never impart to it the cool and quiet humour with which it was related.  We were speaking of the attempt of 1822, or the plot which existed in the army.  In reply to a question of mine, he said—­“Well, I was to have commanded in that revolution, and when the time came, I got into my carriage, without a passport, and drove across the country to ——­, where I obtained post-horses, and proceeded as fast as possible towards ——.  At ——­, a courier met me, with the unhappy intelligence that our plot was discovered, and that several of our principal agents were arrested.  I was advised to push for the frontier, as fast as I could.  But we turned round in the road, and I went to Paris, and took my seat in the Chamber of Deputies.  They looked very queer, and a good deal surprised when they saw