Chapter 12 - Page 2

seizing me,
but that at the Cortadura I should be arrested by you;
that the Emperor wished to make of the Duke d'Orleans
a second volume of the Duke d'Enghien, and that you
would have me shot immediately. There, really," added
the King with a smile, "your hand on your conscience,
were you going to shoot me?"

The Marshal remained silent for a moment, then replied,
with a smile not less inexpressible than that of the King:

"No, sire; I wanted to compromise you."

The subject of conversation was changed. A few
minutes later the Marshal took leave of the King, and the
King, as he watched him go, said with a smile to the person
who heard this conversation:

"Compromise! compromise! To-day it is called
compromise. In reality, he would have shot me!"

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August 4, 1844.

Yesterday the King said to me:

"One of my embarrassments at present, in all this affair
of the University and the clergy, is M. Affre."*

* Archbishop Affre was shot and killed in the Faubourg Saint
Antoine on September 25, 1848, while trying to stop the fighting
between the troops and insurgents.

"Then why, sire," said I, "did you appoint him?"

"I made a mistake, I admit. I had at first appointed
to the archbishopric of Paris the Cardinal of Arras, M. de
la Tour d'Auvergne."

"It was a good choice," I observed.

"Yes, good. He is insignificant. An honest old man of
no account. An easy-going fellow. He was much sought
after by the Carlists. Greatly imposed upon. His whole
family hated me. He was induced to refuse. Not knowing
what to do, and being in haste, I named M. Affre. I
ought to have been suspicious of him. His countenance
is neither open nor frank. I took his underhand air for
a priestly air; I did wrong. And then, you know, it was
in 1840. Thiers proposed him to me, and urged me to
appoint him. Thiers is no judge of archbishops. I did
it without sufficient reflection. I ought to have
remembered what Talleyrand said to me one day: 'The
Archbishop of Paris must always be an old man. The see is
quieter and becomes vacant more frequently.' I appointed
M. Affre, who is young; it was a mistake. However, I
will re-establish the chapter of St. Denis and appoint
as primate of it the Cardinal de la Tour d'Auvergne.
The Papal Nuncio, to whom I spoke of my project just
now, laughed heartily at it, and said: 'The Abbé Affre
will commit some folly. Should he go to Rome the Pope
will receive him very badly. He has acted pusillanimously
and blunderingly on all occasions since he has
been an archbishop. An archbishop of Paris who has