He at last left England, and on his return made several fruitless attempts to be again employed in the navy.  Whilst his mind was thus wavering, he received the intelligence, through M. Bertrand de Molleville, that the king had nominated him to the rank of admiral.  The Duc d’Orleans went to thank the minister, and added that, “He was rejoiced at the honour the king conferred on him, as it would give him an opportunity of communicating to the king his real sentiments, which had been odiously calumniated.  I am very unfortunate,” continued he; “my name has been involved in all the crimes imputed to me, and I have been deemed guilty, because I disdained to justify myself; but time will show whether my conduct belies my words.”

The air of frankness and good faith, and the significant tone with which the Duc d’Orleans uttered these words, struck the minister, who until then had been greatly prejudiced against his innocence.  He inquired if his royal highness would consent to repeat these expressions to the king, as they would rejoice his majesty, and he feared that they might lose some of their force if repeated by himself.  The duke eagerly embraced the idea of seeing the king, if the king would receive him, and expressed his intention of presenting himself at the chateau the next day.  The king, informed of this by his minister, awaited the prince, and had a long and private conference with him.

A confidential document, written with the prince’s own hand, and drawn up in order to justify his memory in the eyes of his children and his friends, informs us of what passed at this interview.  “The ultra-democrats,” said the Duc d’Orleans, “deemed that I wished to make France a republic; the ambitious, that I wished, by my popularity, to force the king to resign the administration of the kingdom into my hands; lastly, the virtuous and patriotic had the illusion of their own virtue concerning me, for they deemed that I sacrificed myself entirely to the public good.  The one party deemed me worse than I was; the others, better.  I have merely followed my nature, and that impelled me, above all, to liberty.  I fancied I saw her image in the parliaments, which at least possessed her tone and forms, and I embraced this phantom of representative freedom.  Thrice did I sacrifice myself for those parliaments; twice from a conviction on my part; the third, not to belie what I had previously done.  I had been in England; I had there seen true liberty, and I doubted not that the States-General, and France also, wished to obtain freedom.  Scarcely had I foreseen that France would possess citizens, than I wished to be one of these citizens myself, and I made unhesitatingly the sacrifice of all the rank and privileges that separated me from the nation:  they cost me nothing; I aspired to be a deputy—­I was one.  I sided with the tiers etat, not from factious feeling, but from justice.  In my opinion, it was impossible to prevent the completion of the Revolution,