Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/110

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FRANCE SINCE 1814

ing them. His sense of honour was not fine enough, his patriotism not sufficiently enlightened, to restrain him. Like a good old paterfamilias, he thought of the children. He had those great bourgeois virtues which in a prince so easily degenerate into vices.

His decision must have been made from the moment when, on the 30th of July, he suffered himself to be led to the Hôtel de Ville, where he received the compromising blandishments of Lafayette, who had made up his mind to support him. But that was not all. On the 1st of August Charles X., who had removed from St. Cloud to Rambouillet, there convoked the Chamber for the 3rd, and ratified the Duke's title of Lieutenant-General. This was tantamount to constituting a Regency, the more so as the next day the King abdicated; and, with a boundless self-abnegation, and magnificent patriotism, the Duc d'Angoulême followed his father's example. This noble Prince thus suffered the Duc d'Orleans to become Regent during the minority of Henri V., and paved the way for conciliation.

He was not understood. The deputies, who do not seem to have had any of the