[Footnote 1:  Memoire de la Duchesse d’Angouleme.]

Without following the ins and outs of politics during the first ten years of Louis Philippe’s reign, which were checkered by revolts, emeutes, and attempts at regicide, I pass on to the next event of general interest,—­the explosion of the “infernal machine” of Fieschi.

It was customary for King Louis Philippe to make a grand military promenade through Paris on one of the three days of July which during his reign were days of public festivity.  On the morning of July 28, 1835, as the clock struck ten, the king, accompanied by his three elder sons, Marshals Mortier and Lobeau, his ministers, his staff, his household, and many generals, rode forth to review forty thousand troops along the Boulevards.  At midday they reached the Boulevard du Temple.  There, as the king was bending forward to receive a petition, a sudden volley of musketry took place, and the pavement was strewed with dead and dying.  Marshal Mortier was killed, together with a number of officers of various grades, some bystanders, a young girl, and an old man.  The king had not been shot, but as his horse started, he had received a severe contusion on the arm.  The Duke of Orleans and the Prince de Joinville were slightly hurt.  Smoke came pouring from the third-story windows of a house (No. 50) on the Boulevard.  A man sprang from the window, seized a rope hanging from the chimney, and swung himself on to a lower roof.  As he did so, he knocked down a flower-pot, which attracted attention to his movements.  A police agent saw him, and a national guard arrested him.  He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his face was covered with blood.  The infernal machine he had employed consisted of twenty-five gun-barrels on a stand so constructed that they could all be fired at once.  Happily two did not go off, and four burst, wounding the wretch who had fired them.  Instantly the reception of the king, which had been cold when he set forth, changed into rapturous enthusiasm.  He and his sons had borne themselves with the greatest bravery.

The queen had been about to quit the Tuileries to witness the review, when the door of her dressing-room was pushed open, and a colonel burst in, exclaiming:  “Madame, the king has been fired at.  He is not hurt, nor the princes, but the Boulevard is strewn with corpses.”  The queen, raising her trembling hands to heaven, waited only for a repetition of his assurance that her dear ones were all safe, and then set out to find the king.  She met him on the staircase, and husband and wife wept in each other’s arms.

The queen then went to her sons, looked at them, and touched them, hardly able to believe that they were not seriously wounded, and turned away, shuddering, from the blood on M. Thiers’ clothes.  Then, returning to her chamber, she sent a note at once to her younger boys, D’Aumale and Montpensier, who were with their tutors at the Chateau d’Eu.  It began with these words:  “Fall down on your knees, my children; God has preserved your father.”