"Does your Majesty hear that?" asked the Duke of Nemours coldly of his dismayed father. Alas! the old man was no longer the hero of July 3d!
"I do, my son," was the trembling reply. "Do you advise abdication?"
"Is there any other course left?" asked the Duke of Montpensier.
"Any other course!" cried the Queen, indignantly. "Oh! are you my son--are you a son of Orléans, and can you talk thus of degradation? Are you a soldier and do you fear? Mount!--mount!--charge on the rebels!--cut them to the earth!--drench the pavement with their blood!--perish, but yield not ignominiously thus!"
"Madame," said M. Thiers, solemnly, "it is too late! There must be an abdication in favor of the Count of Paris, and the appointment of the Duchess of Orléans as Regent, or all is lost!"
"Then if this must be, let it be done with dignity becoming a monarch," said the noble Queen. "Let us all retire to St. Cloud. There may be dictated terms of honorable capitulation. There--"
At that instant in rushed a man breathless, bearing a sheet of paper in his hand, and exclaiming: "Sire--Sire--your troops are delivering their arms to the people! In a moment they will stand where you now stand! Sign this paper, or your life and the lives of all your family will be sacrificed!"
That man was Émile de Girardin, the editor of "La Presse," and the murderer of Armand Carrel, and that paper was an act of abdication.
"Ah! this is a bitter cup," said the old King as he placed his signature to the sheet, "and doubly bitter presented by such a hand! Like Charles X.!"
At one o'clock, at the Bourse and at the corners of all the principal streets, was posted this proclamation: "CITIZENS OF PARIS: The King has abdicated in favor of the Count of Paris, with the Duchess of Orléans as Regent.
A General Amnesty.
Dissolution of the Chamber.
Appeal to the Country."
But the people were now in the midst of the assault on the Palais Royal, and to check them was impossible.
The Palais Royal consisted of two portions--the Château d'Eau, or palace, and the other part, which though the property of the Orléans family was yet rented by private persons, and was occupied for cafés, shops, dwellings and places of entertainment--adorned by colonnades and arcades, and by trees, statues and fountains in the magnificent quadrangle. The property of the citizens was respected--that of the King only was assailed. For two hours did the 14th Regiment pour forth its fire from the numerous windows of that edifice and from the court below. At length, a band of bold Republicans, headed by the chivalric Étienne Arago, musket in hand, charged from the side of the Café de la Régence, followed by a detachment of the National Guard, and, driving the troops into the building, surrounded it with straw which they set on fire. The vast edifice was instantly filled with smoke and flame. The defence ceased. The soldiers rushed out and were instantly slain. The commander of the detachment was pierced by a bayonet. The multitude rushed in, and the building was sacked. The richest and most costly furniture and decorations were at once torn down, dashed to pieces and thrown from the windows by the infuriated populace.