On the morning of the 30th, having received a note from the Grand Referendary inviting me to the meeting of Peers, at the Luxembourg, I wanted to discover the latest news beforehand. I went through the Rue d’Enfer, to the Place Saint-Michel, and the Rue Dauphine. There was still some excitement round the damaged barricades. I compared what I saw with the great revolutionary movement of 1789, and it seemed orderly and silent to me: the difference was obvious.

On the Pont-Neuf, the statue of Henri IV, held a tricolour flag, like a standard-bearer of the League. Gazing at the bronze King, someone in the crowd said: ‘You would never have done anything so stupid, you old rascal.’ Groups of people were gathered on the Quai de l’École; in the distance I made out a general accompanied by two aides de camp all on horseback. I went in that direction. As I pushed through the crowd, I kept my eyes on the general: across his coat he wore a tricolour sash, and his hat was reversed and cocked to one side. He saw me in turn and called out: ‘Heavens, it’s the Vicomte!’ And I, with surprise, recognised Colonel or Captain Dubourg, my companion in Ghent, who on our way back to Paris had taken a succession of undefended towns in the name of Louis XVIII, and brought us half a sheep for our dinner in a hovel in Arnouville. He was the officer whom the newspapers had represented as an austere Republican soldier with a grey moustache, who had refused to serve under Imperial tyranny, and who was so poor they had been obliged to buy him a shabby uniform from the days of Laréveillère-Lepaux at an old clothes shop. And I for my part cried: ‘Why! It’s you! How come…’ He held out his arms, and shook hands with me over Flanquine’s neck; a circle formed round us: ‘My dear sir’, said the military head of the Provision Government to me in a loud voice, pointing to the Louvre, ‘there were twelve hundred of them in there: we peppered their behinds, and how they ran, how they ran!...’ Monsieur Dubourg’s aides de camp burst into hearty laughter; the crowd laughed in unison; and the General spurred his nag that caracoled like a weary animal, and was followed by two other Rosinantes, slipping on the paving stones and ready to collapse between their riders’ legs.

Thus, proudly ensconced, there parted from me that Diomedes of the Hôtel de Ville, moreover a man of courage and wit. I have seen men who, taking the events of 1830 seriously, blushed at this story, because it assailed their heroic credulity. I myself was ashamed to see the comic side of the most serious revolutions and how easily one can mock the people’s good faith.

Monsieur Louis Blanc, in the first volume of his excellent Histoire de dix ans, published after the material I have just written, confirms my tale: ‘A man,’ he says, ‘in a General’s uniform, of medium height, with an expressive face, was crossing the Marché des Innocents, followed by a considerable number of armed men. It was from Monsieur Évariste Dumoulin, journalist on the Constitutionnel, that this individual had received his uniform, taken from an old-clothes shop; and the epaulets he wore had been given to him by Perlet the actor: they came from the property-room of the Opéra-Comique. ‘Who is that General?’ everyone asked. And when those around him replied: ‘It is General Dubourg’, the crowd who had never heard his name before cried: ‘Long live, General Dubourg!’ (I received a letter, on the 9th of January of this year, 1841, from Monsieur Dubourg: which contained the following: ‘How I have longed to see you again since our meeting on the Quai du Louvre! How often I have wished to pour into your heart the sorrows which lacerate my soul! How wretched it is to love one’s country, honour, goodness, glory, with passion when one lives at such a time! …Was I wrong, in 1830, to refuse to submit to what was being enacted? I clearly saw the odious future they were preparing for France; I explained how only evil could come from such fraudulent political structures: but no one understood me.’ On the 5th of July of that same year 1841, Monsieur Dubourg wrote to me again to send me the draft of a letter which he wrote to Messieurs de Martignac and de Caux urging them to admit me to the Council. I have not set down anything about Monsieur Dubourg, then, which is not of the highest verity. Note: Paris, 1841)

A little further on, another sight met my eyes: a ditch had been dug in front of the Colonnade of the Louvre; a priest, in surplice and stole, was praying beside the ditch: the dead were being laid to rest there. I took off my hat and made the sign of the cross. The crowd watched this ceremony, which would have meant nothing if religion had not appeared in it, in respectful silence. So many thoughts and memories came to mind that I remained in a state of immobility. Suddenly I felt the crowd around me; someone shouted: Long live, the defender of Press freedom!’ I had been recognised by the way my hair was dressed. Some young men immediately grasped me, saying: ‘Where are you going, we’ll carry you there?’ I had no idea what to answer; I thanked them: I struggled: I begged them to let me go. The time fixed for the meeting in the Chamber of Peers had not yet arrived. The young men continued shouting: ‘Where are you going? Where are you going?’ I replied at random: ‘All right then, to the Palais-Royal!’ I was immediately escorted there to shouts of: ‘Long live, the Charter! Long live, the liberty of the Press! Long live, Chateaubriand!’ In the Cour des Fontaines, Monsieur Barba, the bookseller, emerged from his house to embrace me.

We arrived at the Palais-Royal; I was bundled into a café, and under its wooden arcade. I was dying from the heat. I reiterated my plea for remission of glory, with clasped hands: no result: the young people refused to let me go. There was a man in the crowd wearing a jacket with turned-up sleeves, with dirty hands, a sinister face, and burning eyes, the sort I had often seen at the start of the Revolution: He was continually trying to approach me, and the young men kept pushing him away. I learnt neither his name nor what he wished of me.

In the end I was forced to say I was going to the Chamber of Peers. We left the café; the cheering recommenced. In the courtyard of the Louvre various cries rang out: some shouted: ‘To the Tuileries! To the Tuileries!’ others; ‘Long live, the First Consul!’ apparently wishing to make me heir to the Republican, Bonaparte. Hyacinthe, who was with me, received his own share of handshakes and embraces. We crossed the Pont des Arts and went along the Rue de Seine. People rushed to see us go by; they crowded the windows. I found all these honours painful, as my arms were being pulled from their sockets. One of the young men pushing me on from behind suddenly put his head between my legs and lifted me onto his shoulders. Fresh cheering; they called out to the spectators in the street and at the windows: ‘Hats off! Long live, the Charter’ and I replied: ‘Yes Gentlemen, long live the Charter, but above all long live the King!’ My cry was not repeated, but it failed to provoke any anger. And that is how the game was lost! Everything could still have been arranged, but it was essential only to present popular men to the people: in revolutions, fame achieves more than an army.

I implored my young friends so feelingly that they at last set me down. In the Rue de Seine, opposite Monsieur Lenormant’s, my publisher’s, an upholsterer offered me an armchair to be carried in; I refused it, and arrived in triumph in the courtyard of the Luxembourg. My generous escort then left me having uttered fresh cries of: ‘Long live, the Charter! Long live, Chateaubriand!’ I was touched by the sentiments of these noble youths: I had shouted: ‘Long live, the King!’ amongst them, as safely as if I had been in my own house; they knew my opinions; they themselves carried me to the Chamber of Peers where they supposed I was going to speak, while yet remaining loyal to my King; and yet it was the 30th of July, and we had just passed close by the ditch where citizens, killed by the bullets fired by Charles X’s soldiers, were being buried.