At Saint-Cloud the Duchesse de Berri and her son had been sent off to the Trianon; but the king remained behind.  He referred everything to the dauphin (the Duc d’Angouleme); the dauphin referred everything to the king.

The dauphin’s temper was imperious, and at this crisis it involved him in a personal collision with Marshal Marmont.  In attempting to tear the marshal’s sword from his side, he cut his fingers.  At sight of the royal blood the marshal was arrested, and led away as a traitor.  The king, however, at once released him, with apologies.

When the leaders in Paris had decided to offer the lieutenant-generalship of France to Louis Philippe during the minority of the Duc de Bordeaux, he could not be found.  He was not at Raincy, he was not at Neuilly.  About midnight, July 29, he entered Paris on foot and in plain clothes, having clambered over the barricades.  He at once made his way to his own residence, the Palais Royal, and there waited events.

At the same moment the Duchesse de Berri was leaving Saint-Cloud with her son.  Before daylight Charles X. followed them to the Trianon; and the soldiers in the Park at Saint-Cloud, who for twenty-four hours had eaten nothing, were breaking their fast on dainties brought out from the royal kitchen.

The proposal that Louis Philippe should accept the lieutenant-generalship was brought to him on the morning of July 30, after the proposition had first been submitted to Talleyrand, who said briefly:  “Let him accept it.”  Louis Philippe did so, accepting at the same time the tricolor, and promising a charter which should guarantee parliamentary privileges.  He soon after appeared at a window of the Hotel-de-Ville, attended by Lafayette and Laffitte, bearing the tricolored flag between them, and was received with acclamations by the people.  But there were men in Paris who still desired a republic, with Lafayette at its head.  Lafayette persisted in assuring them that what France wanted was a king surrounded by republican institutions, and he commended Louis Philippe to them as “the best of republics.”  This idea in a few hours rapidly gained ground.

By midday on July 30th Paris was resuming its usual aspect.  Charles X., finding that the household troops were no longer to be depended on, determined to retreat over the frontier, and left the Trianon for the small palace of Rambouillet, where Marie Louise and the King of Rome had sought refuge in the first hours of their adversity.

The king reached Rambouillet in advance of the news from Paris,[1] and great was the surprise of the guardian of the Chateau to see him drive up in a carriage and pair with only one servant to attend him.  The king pushed past the keeper of the palace, who was walking slowly backward before him, and turned abruptly into a small room on the ground floor, where he locked himself in and remained for many hours.  When he came forth, his figure seemed to have shrunk, his complexion was gray, his eyes were red and swollen.  He had spent his time in burning up old love-letters,—­reminiscences of a lady to whom he had been deeply attached in his youth.