de Chambord's protest against the President's message. In the autumn of 1853, November 20th, the Duke de Nemours paid a visit to Frohsdorf and announced to his Royal Cousin the following solemn declaration: that he came in his brother's name and in his own, to assure the Comte de Chambord that he and his brothers acknowledged but one Monarchy, represented by one Royal Throne. Afterwards, certain conditions had been appended to this solemn deed of adhesion by the Orleans Princes. Since then recrimination has vanished and all doubt about that is useless. France was in her death-throes not long ago, and she is threatened with more troubles. She must be saved.
This safety,—the safety of all, the safety of Princes as well as ours,—they, the Orléans Princes, hold in their hands. Let them listen to the voice of Providence, to the voice of their country, to the voice of their father. Providence speaks to them by the woes and sorrows of their agonizing country; from the wreck of the Throne which God cast down at a sign. He tells them that pride is an affront to His Divinity; that the towering wave breeds the storm, and the uplifted mountain the frost and the snow. They among Frenchmen who do not see signs of bloodshed in the skies must be wilfully Wind indeed; and those who will not see them and hold aloof, are guilty of treason. The day always comes which may never return. It is not a question of turning back, the Royal Princes must make a stand, and we rejoiced in reading of their shortly intended visit to Frohsdorf. Were the Comte de Chambord to die to-morrow, it would be too late. As the Royal Sons of France, they knew full well that they can only preserve their august tide by acknowledging the King of France. The time may come—and it must come—when they will reign; but their reign would be ephemeral and born of the Revolution, their dynasty would ever be its toy and slave. They would remain wretched Pretenders, levelled to being confronted with other pretenders. A Bonaparte or a Louis Napoleon will still exist, and France, the unhappy victim of a political hydra for ever being born again of blood, riots and Coups d'Etat, would fall by the hand of a parricide.
Many, sacrilegiously, had relied on the sterility of the Royal stem, as though the God who dried the sap could not bid it flow
