eril, it was decided to send a delegation,
consisting of M. Thiers, M. Scheffer, and M. Sebastiani, to the rural
chateau of Louis Philippe, at Neuilly, which was but a short distance
from Paris, to offer to him the crown. Should he refuse it, they
were directed to arrest him and convey him to a place of safety, and
hold him in close custody. Louis Blanc, in his "_Dix Ans de Louis
Philippe_," has given a minute account of this interview. It would
seem that Louis Philippe, in an agony of suspense, though informed of
the approach of the delegation, was not prepared to meet them. To
avoid the interview, he fled to Rancy, leaving his wife and sister
behind him.

The Duchess of Orleans received the gentlemen. Pale and trembling,
she listened to the offer of a crown to her husband. Then with
extreme emotion she replied to M. Scheffer, the speaker of the party:

"How could you undertake such a mission? That M. Thiers should have
charged himself with it, I can understand. He little knew us. But
that you, who have been admitted to our intimacy--who knew us so
well--ah! we can never forgive it."

Just then Louis Philippe's sister, Madame Adelaide, followed by
Madame de Montjoie, entered the room. Fully comprehending the object
of the mission, and the dangers which surrounded them, Madame
Adelaide said,

"Let them make my brother a president, a commander of the National
Guard, any thing, so that they do not make him a proscribed."

"Madame," responded M. Thiers, "it is a throne which we come to offer
him."

"But what," rejoined the princess, "will Europe think? Shall he seat
himself on the throne from which Louis XVI. descended to mount the
scaffold? What a panic will it strike in all royal houses! The peace
of the world will be endangered."

"These apprehensions, madame," M. Thiers replied, "are natural, but
they are not well-founded. England, full of the recollection of the
banished Stuarts, will applaud an event of which her history
furnishes an example and a model. As to the absolute monarchies, far
from reproaching the Duke of Orleans for fixing on his head a crown
floating on the storm, they will approve a step which will render his
elevation a barrier against the unchained passions of the multitude.
There is something great and worth saving in France. And if it be too
late for legitimacy, it is not for a constitutional throne. After
all, there remains to the Duke of Orleans only a choice of danger. In
the present p