ed overtures which showed
that Bonaparte had never thought of playing the part of General Monk.
The exiled prince, then residing at Warsaw, was courteously but most
firmly urged by the First Consul to renounce both for himself and for
the other members of his House all claims to the throne of France, in
return for which he would receive a pension of two million francs a
year. The notion of sinking to the level of a pensionary of the French
Republic touched Bourbon pride to the quick and provoked this spirited
reply:

"As a descendant of St. Louis, I shall endeavour to imitate his
example by respecting myself even in captivity. As successor to
Francis I., I shall at least aspire to say with him: 'We have lost
everything but our honour."'

To this declaration the Comte d'Artois, his son, the Duc de Berri,
Louis Philippe of Orleans, his two sons, and the two Condes gave their
ardent assent; and the same loyal response came from the young Conde,
the Duc d'Enghien, dated Ettenheim, March 22nd, 1803. Little did men
think when they read this last defiance to Napoleon that within a year
its author would be flung into a grave in the moat of the Castle of
Vincennes.

Scarcely had the echoes of the Bourbon retorts died away than the
outbreak of war between England and France raised the hopes of the
French royalist exiles in London; and their nimble fancy pictured the
French army and nation as ready to fling themselves at the feet of
Louis XVIII. The future monarch did not share these illusions. In the
chilly solitudes of Warsaw he discerned matters in their true light,
and prepared to wait until the vaulting ambition of Napoleon should
league Europe against him. Indeed, when the plans of the forward wing
in London were explained to him, with a view of enlisting his support,
he deftly waved aside the embarrassing overtures by quoting the lines:

"Et pour etre approuves
De semblables projets veulent etre acheves,"

a cautious reply which led his brother, then at Edinburgh, scornfully
to contemn his _feebleness_ as unworthy of any further confidences.[281]
In truth, the Comte d'Artois, destined one day to be Charles X. of
France, was not fashioned by nature for a Fabian policy of delay: not
even the misfortunes of exile could instill into the watertight
compartments of his brain the most elementary notions of prudence.
Daring, however, attracts daring; and this prince had gat