soldiers and National Guards, who kept back an immense multitude, I had constantly amid the various shouts caught one of “Down with traitors,” which, at first, I did not understand.  I had been so far away.  But it was explained to me that this demonstration was aimed at my father and his ministers, guilty as they were of having refused to launch France into a general war about the Eastern question.  I fancy my father troubled his head little about these would-be-wise demonstrators, worthy forerunners of the Boulevard braggarts who, at a later date, in 1870, so appositely shouted “a Berlin.”  He had other matters to preoccupy him.  The ease with which all the Governments in Europe had leagued themselves together, to inflict a moral check on France, under cover of the Pasha of Egypt, betrayed the latent hostility of all those powers to our own country.  Let us say it outright.  In the eyes of the European monarchies, the Government of July, by virtue of its origin, and however wise and courageous the policy of the King, my father, might have been, had always remained a revolutionary, and therefore a hostile government Nothing else was possible; and so at bottom it always will be, as long as we continue to run in the rut along which we have been floundering for the last hundred years.  Look at any country in Europe, no matter which, and see against whom the established Government carries on the domestic struggle.  Against Nihilists in Russia, Socialists in Germany, anarchists and unquiet spirits of all kind everywhere, imitations of those of our own country, and by them encouraged to press on the same course of demand, and spoliation, and licence.  And hence the necessary consequence, that sovereigns and organized societies, whose first desire is to exist, and neither to be overthrown nor despoiled, are always ready to make common cause against that hotbed of bad example, Revolutionary France.  The events of 1840 showed this with the utmost clearness; and in face of that demonstration the path of duty lay clear.  It was to lose no time in taking, without boastfulness, but also without weakness, all the necessary measures against the danger which was constantly threatening, although for the moment it was warded off.  Among these measures was one my father passionately desired, and which he snatched from the Chambers by sheer tenacity—­the fortification of Paris.  This tenacity was necessary, for the struggle was long, bitter, and inexplicable While it lasted the heroes of the cafes greeted my father in the streets and at reviews with insulting shouts.  The cry, “Down with the Bastille,” had succeeded that of “Down with traitors,” and all the fainthearted section would have knuckled down.  All the energy of the King, of my brother the Due d’Orleans—­as eager as himself on the question—­and of the ministers, was needed to bring them back into fighting line.  The aid too of those patriots of all shades—­and thank God there still are some such!—­who put national independence and honour above party questions, had to be invoked.  And so Paris was fortified Who dares nowadays to say, that this was not a convincing proof of the King’s foresight as a ruler?  Who dares to say, that if hesitation, and desultoriness, and incapacity, and evil chance, had not clung to the command of our armies in 1870, the German invasion might not have been broken up upon those ramparts?