It was indeed immense, irreparable.  For the past ten years we all, and with us the whole of France, had looked to my brother as our leader, the “chef de demain,” our chief in the great days that were to come.  We had of course the tenderest affection, the most entire devotion, the deepest respect for the King, Le Pere, as we always called him amongst ourselves, but it was to Chartres we turned for guidance always.  There was not one of us who would not from childhood upwards have unhesitatingly accepted his advice and his authority.  How often had we discussed with him all the chances the future might bring!  How often, too, had he pointed out the various parts he destined each of us to play, every one of them, we felt, stamped with the good sense and profound understanding of a born leader of men!  And what we, his brothers, his lieutenants, so to speak, felt about him, the country felt as well.  The King was in the breach, valiantly carrying on the battle of life, to preserve the peace, calm, and prosperity she was enjoying to France, and all those who were not blinded by democratic envy were grateful to him for so doing.  But he was growing old, great complications might arise, and, like us, all had looked confidently to the young leader who, without ever mixing himself up in the barren struggles of everyday politics, was ceaselessly preparing himself for great and important contingencies.  For every one else, as well as for us, I repeat, the Duc d’Orleans was the chef de demain.  His incessant care for the good organisation and perfecting of our military forces, and the pains he took to select the most deserving men from their ranks without a shadow of favouritism or regard for birth—­such men as Lamoriciere, Cavaignac, Canrobert, and MacMahon—­and to advance them to the highest positions, had been appreciated by the public.  All this was pour demain, for the morrow.  So too in matters civilian.  If he did stretch out his hand, not indeed to incorrigible revolutionaries, but to men of advanced opinions, who were in opposition to the King’s Government, that too was “for the morrow.”  It was so as to be able, in the hour of his country’s peril, to serve as the patriotic link between all the living forces in the nation.  The general feeling, alas! both our own and that of the great majority of thinking men, was that the bond that might have held these forces together against revolution, overflowing from within, as well as enemies attacking from without, had just been snapped.  Death had destroyed the anticipated and universally accepted successor, and with him the chief prop of the July Monarchy.  Thenceforward the ship was to toss uncommanded, objectless and compassless, at the mercy of every tempest.  Men and principles alike had failed us, and we were to relapse once more into a state of unstable government.  This sad presentiment was only too well justified by ultimate events.