ce spoke of never came. Soon after that commenced
the troubles to the royal family; the dreadful events of Versailles; the
flight to Varennes; the 10th August,--a horrible catalogue I cannot bear
to trace. There, yonder, where now the groups are loitering, or sitting
around in happy knots, there died Louis the Sixteenth. The prince I
spoke of is an exile: they call him Louis the Eighteenth; but he is a
king without a kingdom.

"But Jacotot lives on in hope. He has waded through all the terrors of
the Revolution; he has seen the guillotine erected almost before his
door and beheld his former friends led one by one to the slaughter.
Twice was he himself brought forth, and twice was his life spared by
some admirer of his cuisine. But perhaps all his trials were inferior
to the heart-burning with which he saw the places once occupied by the
blood of Saint Louis now occupied by the _canaille_ of the Revolution.
Marat and Robespierre frequented his house; and Barras seldom passed
a week without dining there. This, I verily believe, was a heavier
affliction than any of his personal sufferings; and I have often heard
him recount, with no feigned horror, the scenes which took place among
the _incroyables_, as they called themselves, whose orgies he contrasted
so unfavorably with the more polished excesses of his regal visitors.
Through all the anarchy of that fearful period; through the scarce less
sanguinary time of the Directory; through the long, dreary oppression of
the consulate; and now, in the more grinding tyranny of the Empire, he
hopes, ay, still hopes on, that the day will come when from the hands of
the king himself he shall receive his long-buried rank, and stand forth
a De Gency. Poor fellow! there is something noble and manly in the long
struggle with fortune,--in that long-sustained contest in which he would
never admit defeat.

"Such are the followers of the Bourbons: their best traits, their
highest daring, their most long-suffering endurance, only elicited in
the pursuit of some paltry object of personal ambition. They have tasted
the cup of adversity, ay, drained it to the very dregs; they have seen
carnage and bloodshed such as no war ever surpassed: and all they
have learned by experience is, to wish for the long past days of
royal tyranny and frivolity back again; to see a glittering swarm
of debauchees fluttering around a sensualist king; and to watch the
famished faces of the multitude, without a though