[Footnote 1:  Temple Bar.]

So M. Thiers went to reside where the Emperor William had had his quarters, at the Prefecture of Versailles, and soon the palace was filled with refugees from Paris.  Many of the state apartments were turned into hospital wards.  Louis XIV.’s bedchamber was given up to the finance committee.

The thing to be done, with speed and energy, as all men felt, was to re-besiege Paris and put down the Commune.  All parties united in this work; but the conservatives confidently believed that when this was done, Thiers and the moderate Republicans would join them in giving France a stable government under the Comte de Chambord.

On Sept. 19, 1821, when that young prince was a year old, a public subscription throughout France had presented him with the beautiful old Chateau de Chambord, built on the Loire by Francis I., and from which he adopted his title when in exile.

After the young prince had been removed from his mother’s influence, he was carefully brought up in the most Bourbon of Bourbon traditions.  When he became a man he travelled extensively in Europe.  In 1841 he broke his leg by falling from his horse, and was slightly lame for the rest of his life.  In 1846 he married Marie Therese Beatrix of Modena, who was even more strictly Bourbon than himself.  He and his wife retired to Froehsdorf, a beautiful country seat not very far from Vienna.  There they were constantly visited by travelling Frenchmen of all parties, and on no one did the prince fail to make a favorable impression.  He was good, upright, cultivated, kindly, but inflexibly wedded to the traditions of his family.  He loved France with his whole soul, and was glad of anything that brought her good and glory.  But France was his,—­his by divine right; and this right France must acknowledge.  After that, there was not anything he would not do for her.

[Illustration:  COMPTE DE CHAMBORD.]

But France was not willing to efface all her history from 1792 to 1871, with the exception of the episode of the Restoration, when school histories were circulated mentioning Marengo, Austerlitz, etc., as victories gained under the king’s lieutenant-general, M. de Bonaparte.

During the Empire, under Napoleon III., the Comte de Chambord had remained nearly passive at Froehsdorf.  His life was passed in meditation, devotion, the cultivation of literary tastes, and a keen interest in all the events that were passing in his native country.  During the Franco-Prussian war he sent words of encouragement to his suffering countrymen, and nobly refrained from embarrassing the affairs of France by any personal intrigues; but when the war and the Commune were over, and his chances of the throne grew bright, he issued a proclamation which has been called “an act of political suicide.”

On May 8, three weeks before the downfall of the Commune, he put forth his first manifesto.  Here is what an English paper said of it a few days before his next—­the suicidal—­proclamation appeared:—­