It was against the above-named pretenders that Louis Philippe (now nearly a hundred years old), a prince amongst sovereigns, was called upon to defend his crown.

The city of Paris was guarded, as we all know, by a hundred and twenty-four forts, of a thousand guns each—­provisioned for a considerable time, and all so constructed as to fire, if need were, upon the palace of the Tuileries.  Thus, should the mob attack it, as in August 1792, and July 1830, the building could be razed to the ground in an hour; thus, too, the capital was quite secure from foreign invasion.  Another defence against the foreigners was the state of the roads.  Since the English companies had retired, half a mile only of railroad had been completed in France, and thus any army accustomed, as those of Europe now are, to move at sixty miles an hour, would have been ennuye’d to death before they could have marched from the Rhenish, the Maritime, the Alpine, or the Pyrenean frontier upon the capital of France.  The French people, however, were indignant at this defect of communication in their territory, and said, without the least show of reason, that they would have preferred that the five hundred and seventy-five thousand billions of francs which had been expended upon the fortifications should have been laid out in a more peaceful manner.  However, behind his forts, the King lay secure.

As it is our aim to depict in as vivid a manner as possible the strange events of the period, the actions, the passions of individuals and parties engaged, we cannot better describe them than by referring to contemporary documents, of which there is no lack.  It is amusing at the present day to read in the pages of the Moniteur and the Journal des Debats the accounts of the strange scenes which took place.

The year 1884 had opened very tranquilly.  The Court of the Tuileries had been extremely gay.  The three-and-twenty youngest Princes of England, sons of her Majesty Victoria, had enlivened the balls by their presence; the Emperor of Russia and family had paid their accustomed visit; and the King of the Belgians had, as usual, made his visit to his royal father-in-law, under pretence of duty and pleasure, but really to demand payment of the Queen of the Belgians’ dowry, which Louis Philippe of Orleans still resolutely declined to pay.  Who would have thought that in the midst of such festivity danger was lurking rife, in the midst of such quiet, rebellion?

Charenton was the great lunatic asylum of Paris, and it was to this repository that the scornful journalist consigned the pretender to the throne of Louis XVI.

But on the next day, viz.  Saturday, the 29th February, the same journal contained a paragraph of a much more startling and serious import; in which, although under a mask of carelessness, it was easy to see the Government alarm.

On Friday, the 28th February, the Journal des Debats contained a paragraph, which did not occasion much sensation at the Bourse, so absurd did its contents seem.  It ran as follows:—­