country which he thought doomed to destruction, and to seek safety in
flight. Louis Philippe, the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans, then a
lad of about 16, was on his staff. They fled together. This aroused
popular indignation in Paris to the highest pitch. This young prince,
Louis Philippe, then entitled the Duke of Chartres, and who, as
subsequently King of the French, is the subject of this memoir, had
written in a letter to his father, which was intercepted, these
words: "I see the Convention utterly destroying France." It was
believed that Dumouriez had entered into a plot for placing the Duke
of Orleans on the throne, and that the duke was cognizant of the
plan.

A decree was immediately passed ordering the arrest of every Bourbon
in France. The duke was arrested and conveyed to Marseilles, with
several members of his family. Here he was held in durance for some
time, and was then brought to Paris to be tried for treason. Though
there was no evidence whatever against him, he was declared guilty of
being "an accomplice in a conspiracy against the unity and
indivisibility of the Republic," and was condemned to death.

The duke, as he heard the sentence, replied: "Since you were
predetermined to put me to death, you ought at least to have sought
for more plausible pretexts to attain that end; for you will never
persuade the world that you deem me guilty of what you now declare me
to be convicted. However, since my lot is decided, I demand that you
will not let me languish here until to-morrow, but order that I be
led to execution instantly." His request was not granted; but he was
conducted back to the cells of the Conciergerie, to be executed the
next day. The next morning he was placed in the death-cart at the
Conciergerie, with four others of the condemned, to be conveyed to
the guillotine, which stood in the _Place de la Concorde_. He was
elaborately dressed in a green frock-coat, white waistcoat, doe-skin
breeches, and with boots carefully polished. His hair was dressed and
powdered with care. As the cart passed slowly along in front of his
princely abode, the Palais Royal, and through immense crowds, lining
the streets, who formerly had been fed by his liberality, and who now
clamored for his death, he looked around upon them with apparently
perfect indifference.

At the guillotine the executioner took off his coat, and was about to
draw off his boots, when he said, calmly, "It is only loss of time;
you wi