a
perished world. The emperor chooses his own advisers, and if they are
bad ones, his Majesty certainly will not ask Alain and me to replace
them."

"You do not answer--you evade me," said the Duchesse; with a mournful
smile. "You are too skilled a man of the world, Monsieur Enguerrand, not
to know that it is not only legislators and ministers that are necessary
to the support of a throne, and the safeguard of a nation. Do you not
see how great a help it is to both throne and nation when that section
of public opinion which is represented by names illustrious in history,
identified with records of chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion, rallies
round the order established? Let that section of public opinion stand
aloof, soured and discontented, excluded from active life, lending no
counter-balance to the perilous oscillations of democratic passion,
and tell me if it is not an enemy to itself as well as a traitor to the
principles it embodies?"

"The principles it embodies, Madame," said Alain, "are those of fidelity
to a race of kings unjustly set aside, less for the vices than the
virtues of ancestors. Louis XV. was the worst of the Bourbons,--he was
the bien aime: he escapes. Louis XVI. was in moral attributes the best
of the Bourbons,--he dies the death of a felon. Louis XVIII., against
whom much may be said, restored to the throne by foreign bayonets,
reigning as a disciple of Voltaire might reign, secretly scoffing alike
at the royalty and the religion which were crowned in his person, dies
peacefully in his bed. Charles X., redeeming the errors of his youth
by a reign untarnished by a vice, by a religion earnest and sincere, is
sent into exile for defending established order from the very inroads
which you lament. He leaves an heir against whom calumny cannot invent
a tale, and that heir remains an outlaw simply because he descends from
Henry IV., and has a right to reign. Madame, you appeal to us as among
the representatives of the chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion which
characterized the old nobility of France. Should we deserve that
character if we forsook the unfortunate, and gained wealth and honour in
forsaking?"

"Your words endear you to me. I am proud to call you cousin," said the
Duchesse. "But do you, or does any man in his senses believe that if you
upset the Empire you could get back the Bourbons; that you would not
be in imminent danger of a Government infinitely more opposed to the
theories on wh