It was the 13th of July, 1842.  The day was fine.  The duke appeared at a window which looked into the courtyard where the Count de Cambis was giving orders concerning the day’s service.  “The victoria to-day,” called out His Royal Highness from the balcony.—­“And Tom?” was the question sent upward to the duke.—­“No, let me have Kent:  he goes best with Ridge,” returned the duke.—­“But Kent has been much worked lately, monseigneur, and—.”—­“Well, well, Cambis, as you like:  you know best,” was the final reply as the duke turned away from the window and retreated into the chamber.  Just then one of the grooms, who had been standing at a respectful distance and had overheard the words, came forward and in a voice full of mystery begged to inform M. le Comte that something was wrong with Tom, who had been observed to be restless and irritable the whole morning, and inquired whether it would not be well to have him doctored.  “Pooh! pooh!” exclaimed the count.  “You are all chicken-hearted in your stable—­always complaining of Tom, whose only fault lies in his spirit.  He only shows his thorough breeding, and the duke wishes to make a gallant display on starting.  There is a crowd already gathered round the gate to see him drive off.”  So Tom was harnessed, and the postilion who rode Piedefer declares that from the very first he argued ill of Tom’s temper, for he observed a vicious expression in his eye, and a distension of the nostrils which never boded good.

The Duke of Orleans was driven from the palace-gate full of health and spirits.  He was to proceed to Neuilly to bid farewell to his mother, Queen Amelie, at the little summer chateau there.  Detractors of the duke’s character will tell you that on the way he stopped and prolonged to undue length a visit he should not have made at all, and that consequently he was compelled to urge the postilion to greater speed.  Whatever the cause, just at the entrance of the Route de la Revolte the dreaded outburst of temper on the part of the irascible Tom took place.  At first merely fidgety, and managed with the greatest delicacy by the English postilion, then ill-tempered and capricious, swerving from side to side, necessitating in self-defence the use of the whip—­“But only gently and lighthanded, as one’s obliged to do sometimes, just to show ’em who’s master,” was the poor fellow’s explanation amid the bitter tears he shed when recounting the catastrophe—­when suddenly Tom reared and plunged, and set off at a mad gallop which no human hand could have had the power to arrest.  The postilion kept a cool head and steady seat:  not so the Duke of Orleans, who rose to his feet in alarm just as the wheels of the carriage struck against a stone.  The shock caused him to lose his balance:  he was dashed violently to the ground, and in a few hours the hope of France lay dead in the small back shop of a petty tradesman in the avenue.