[Illustration: LOUIS PHILIPPE, KING OF THE FRENCH.]
In May Talleyrand was back at Rochecotte, tending his peaches and flowers as he loved to do, and discussing the situation with Thiers, Mignet, and others. The elections had gone heavily against the ministers. On June 11th he wrote to the Princess de Vaudemont that “the decisive moment was at hand.” On the 14th he wrote to Barante, “We are moving onward towards an unknown world, without pilot or compass: the only certain thing is that it will all end in shipwreck.” Although he had certainly discussed the change from Bourbons to Orleanists with his friends, he was really in a state of great concern and anxiety. It was not at all certain that they would be consulted as to the future. The excesses of the Clerical and Royalist party had so deeply moved the country that a bloody rebellion and mob-triumph was possible. In July he was back at Paris. On the 26th appeared the royal ordinances that would destroy the liberty of the press, dissolve the Chamber, and manipulate the elections. On the following day he saw the troops marching to destroy the machines of the rebellious printers, and the first barricades raised in their path. It is said that he had the large golden sign, “Hotel Talleyrand,” taken down from over the gate of his house. His darkest recollections of 1792 were revived. On the morning of the 28th the streets of Paris were found to be cut everywhere with barricades. The tricolour floated from the roof of the Hotel de Ville and Notre Dame.
The long days of the 28th and 29th were spent in great anxiety. His secretary (or that extremely imaginative person who has dressed up and expounded Colmache’s “Recollections”) says that when the tocsin rang out on the morning of the 28th the Prince exclaimed: “Hark! We triumph.” When the man asked _who_ triumphed, he is said to have answered: “Hush! I will tell you to-morrow.” On the 29th he tried to induce the peers to take a definite line, but they were too timid. On the 30th the rumour spread that the King had fled from St. Cloud. He sent his secretary to make inquiries at the palace, and heard that it was so. He then sent Colmache with a note, to be burned in the secretary’s presence or returned to him, to the sister of the Duc d’Orléans, Mme. Adélaide, who was at Neuilly with the Duke. The note merely said: “Madame may have full confidence in the bearer, who is my secretary.” The secretary was instructed to tell her that the Duke must come to Paris and call himself Lieutenant-General of the kingdom—“the rest will follow.” Before night the Duke was at the Palais Royal. Charles X had withdrawn his inspired ordinances at three o’clock that afternoon, but it was too late. The Republicans were gradually controlled, and the Duke of Orleans was accepted as the head of the State.