Then they came on to Saint-Ouen, leisurely enough, for there was no hurry, and it was just as well to let the good people of Paris get up on their tiptoes of expectation before their eyes were gladdened by the sight of a Most Christian and Royally Scrofulous Majesty.

But finally the 3rd of May came round, and the royal king was all dressed for the royal entry, with beautiful green gloves on the royal scrofulous hands, and bright red velvet gaiters on the fat, gouty legs, and a blue coat with gold epaulettes, and on the royal hat--and this was the most touching of all—a big white cockade, which had been pinned there, when the Most Christian Majesty was in London, by the fat hands of no less a personage than Beau Brummel's friend, that worthless rake and puppy the Prince. Regent of England, alias "first gentleman in Europe," whom Thackeray, skilfully dissecting in the "Four Georges," found to consist mainly of scented handkerchiefs, padded waistcoats, oily wigs, and wind.

Now to get King Punctuality into the carriage. That was a trick indeed! And the Marshals and Generals pushed and tugged, and, as a combination of effort is generally successful, it was finally accomplished, and the Marshals and Generals could take off their plumed hats and mop their brows and thank their stars that Louis-Stanislas-Xavier de Bourbon was not to get out again until he reached his journey's end, and hope that there would be a derrick at the Tuileries Palace when he did so. And, in witnessing the difficulties experienced by His Most Christian Majesty in mounting his coach to make his entree into his good city of Paris, it is interesting to note the

remarkable agility with which, a year later, this same two hundred and odd pounds of royal scrofulous flesh got into its royal traveling clothes, down the grand staircase, into the royal coach, and packed off to Ghent, when the cocked hat and redingote grise of the Little Corporal appeared before the gates of Lyons. But, says the candid reader, you are hard on King Louis XVIII. He was a stout king, it is true, but then he was old and infirm; you should have some respect for old age. Remember too what a hard time he had had wandering about over Europe, and what beautiful letters he had written to the First Consul, full of touching allusions to Francis I.

Good reader, any sympathy expended on LouisStanislas-Xavier de Bourbon would be a case of pearls and pigs. If, when he was Count of Provence, he had only eaten and grown fat he would have done no more than many another, but he tried to blacken the character of poor Marie Antoinette, and did it systematically too. And when the wind began to whistle and the storm to howl, he jumped into a traveling carriage, for he was more agile in those days, and hurried off to Coblentz, leaving brother Louis XVI, who had a good heart and an empty head, to get out of things as best he could. Now, however, since kind foreign friends had gotten brother Louis XVI's bed ready for him, and a good dinner was cooking in the Tuileries kitchen, he was naturally willing enough to come back and enjoy it all. And so, with punctual King Cochon in the carriage, the royal procession started at a trot.

At the right door of the carriage rode the Count d'Artois, who had made his entry into Paris some days before. On which occasion, when he had been

somewhat at a loss for something to say to the joyous deputation sent out to meet him, the Prince de Talleyrand or Count Beugnot had kindly invented for him the famous phrase, "Nothing is changed; there is only one more Frenchman," which looked so nicely the next morning in the " Moniteur." He rode along on his prancing horse trained a la Franconi, looking as gay as in the old days at Versailles, when his principal occupations had been dancing on the tight rope and seducing femmes de chambre.

By the left door rode the Duc de Berri, the worthy son of his worthy father the Count d'Artois; and in front of the royal carriage—and this might surprise us if we did not know that, as the Duc de la Rochefoucauld said, "Everything happens in France”—rode Marshal Berthier, Prince of Neufchatel and Wagram, the man who during twenty years had been, in cabinet and carriage, by the side of the Emperor Napoleon. He rode along with the gayest possible air, and, en passant, the reference to the Emperor Napoleon was quite a slip in this connection, for the Marshal Berthier, Prince of Neufchatel and Wagram, at that moment knew no such person. He had a slight acquaintance with Usurper Bonaparte, but it would have been most mal a propos for any one to have mentioned it.

But it was not all comedy, this entree of LouisStanislas-Xavier de Bourbon: there was tragedy about it too. By the King's side in the royal carriage sat the pale, melancholy Duchess d'Angouleme, the last of the family of Louis XVI. She was entering again this Paris of which she had such dreadful recollections, this Paris where her little brother Louis had perished

at the hands of Simon the shoemaker, and her father, mother, and aunt Elizabeth upon the guillotine. There was no joy in her face.

And look on ahead of the royal carriage. There, lining the road on either side, dressed in their blue coats and great bearskin caps, scarred with the sabrecuts and bayonet-thrusts of Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Eckmuhl, Wagram, Moscow, Lutzen, Bautzen, Montmirail, stood the Grenadiers of the Garde Imperiale. Among them were our old friends, Francois Legrand, Gustave Lebon, and Andre Marceau. Their great hairy caps were pushed down on their knit brows, their lips were curled in angry scorn, their teeth showed fiercely under their heavy mustaches; and when the royal procession passed they all presented arms with such a furious rattle of weapons that more than one spectator trembled.

The comedy was in the fat king, the grinning Count d'Artois, the foppish Duc de Berri. The tragedy was in the sad Duchess d'Angouleme and in those heroic, war-worn veterans of the Garde Imperiale. And thus they reached the Tuileries Palace, and thus was Louis-Stanislas-Xavier de Bourbon installed--not par la grace de Dieu, but by the grace of England, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden and Dame Fortune —King of France—pro tem.

CHAPTER XXIX

A Thunderbolt

On a sudden open fly,

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,

The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.

—Milton, Paradise Lost.

THUS they reached the Tuileries Palace, and how nice everything was! "Why, it must be confessed," said His Majesty, "that Bonaparte was a very good tenant. He has arranged everything excellently for me." Why, it was perfectly charming! There were a number of N's here and there, however, on the furniture and on the walls, but that was easily managed. A strip of velvet was pasted over them and the effect was fine; and as for the eagles beside the throne—why, they looked so well that it was decided not to take them down. Then there were some marble busts of the Emperor about the Louvre, but they were soon fixed. Clever workmen put some plaster of Paris on the nose and made a nice plaster of Paris wig for each, and there you were! The simplest thing in the world! Bonaparte? Not a bit of it—Louis XVIII! And now to business. The Imperial chefs were kicked out of the Tuileries kitchen and the Royal chefs put in, and the menus were carefully arranged for the royal breakfasts, dinners and suppers, and, this important matter being happily concluded, a