第137章

All gone--not one left!--And where was Louis Philippe? The venerable Prince was a captive in the Tuileries; the Irish Brigade was encamped around it: they had reached the palace a little too late; it was already occupied by the partisans of his Majesty Louis XVII.

That respectable monarch and his followers better knew the way to the Tuileries than the ignorant sons of Erin. They burst through the feeble barriers of the guards; they rushed triumphant into the kingly halls of the palace; they seated the seventeenth Louis on the throne of his ancestors; and the Parisians read in the Journal des Debats, of the fifth of November; an important article, which proclaimed that the civil war was concluded:--"The troubles which distracted the greatest empire in the world are at an end. Europe, which marked with sorrow the disturbances which agitated the bosom of the Queen of Nations, the great leader of Civilization, may now rest in peace. That monarch whom we have long been sighing for; whose image has lain hidden, and yet oh! how passionately worshipped, in every French heart, is with us once more. Blessings be on him; blessings--a thousand blessings upon the happy country which is at length restored to his beneficent, his legitimate, his reasonable sway!

"His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVII. yesterday arrived at his palace of the Tulleries, accompanied by his august allies. His Royal Highness the Duke of Orleans has resigned his post as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and will return speedily to take up his abode at the Palais Royal. It is a great mercy that the children of his Royal Highness, who happened to be in the late forts round Paris, (before the bombardment which has so happily ended in their destruction,) had returned to their father before the commencement of the cannonading. They will continue, as heretofore, to be the most loyal supporters of order and the throne.

"None can read without tears in their eyes our august monarch's proclamation.

"'Louis, by &c.--

"'My children! After nine hundred and ninety-nine years of captivity, I am restored to you. The cycle of events predicted by the ancient Magi, and the planetary convolutions mentioned in the lost Sibylline books, have fulfilled their respective idiosyncrasies, and ended (as always in the depths of my dungeons I confidently expected) in the triumph of the good Angel, and the utter discomfiture of the abominable Blue Dragon.

"'When the bombarding began, and the powers of darkness commenced their hellish gunpowder evolutions, I was close by--in my palace of Charenton, three hundred and thirty-three thousand miles off, in the ring of Saturn--I witnessed your misery. My heart was affected by it, and I said, "Is the multiplication-table a fiction? are the signs of the Zodiac mere astronomers' prattle?""'I clapped chains, shrieking and darkness, on my physician, Dr.

Pinel. The keepers I shall cause to be roasted alive. I summoned my allies round about me. The high contracting Powers came to my bidding: monarchs from all parts of the earth; sovereigns from the Moon and other illumined orbits; the white necromancers, and the pale imprisoned genii. I whispered the mystic sign, and the doors flew open. We entered Paris in triumph, by the Charenton bridge.

Our luggage was not examined at the Octroi. The bottle-green ones were scared at our shouts, and retreated, howling: they knew us, and trembled.

"'My faithful Peers and Deputies will rally around me. I have a friend in Turkey--the Grand Vizier of the Mussulmans: he was a Protestant once--Lord Brougham by name. I have sent to him to legislate for us: he is wise in the law, and astrology, and all sciences; he shall aid my Ministers in their councils. I have written to him by the post. There shall be no more infamous mad-houses in France, where poor souls shiver in strait-waistcoats.

"'I recognized Louis Philippe, my good cousin. He was in his counting-house, counting out his money, as the old prophecy warned me. He gave me up the keys of his gold; I shall know well how to use it. Taught by adversity, I am not a spendthrift, neither am Ia miser. I will endow the land with noble institutions instead of diabolical forts. I will have no more cannon founded. They are a curse and shall be melted--the iron ones into railroads; the bronze ones into statues of beautiful saints, angels, and wise men; the copper ones into money, to be distributed among my poor. I was poor once, and I love them.

"'There shall be no more poverty; no more wars; no more avarice; no more passports; no more custom-houses; no more lying: no more physic.

"'My Chambers will put the seal to these reforms. I will it. I am the king.

(Signed) 'Louis.'"