evening school, and go down the Rue de la Montagne or the Rue des Sept-Voies playing a thousand pranks as I went, and that my grief used be keen indeed when I had to go back the next morning.  Yet some good comrades I had whom I dearly loved, and amongst whom I improved in playing various games, and learned the art of both giving and receiving kicks and cuffs.  But, take it all in all, my schooldays are, as they say in mathematics, “a minus quantity” to me.

CHAPTER II

1830-1833

[Illustration:  Boy waving flag and shooting a gun.]

The Revolution of 1830 broke out during my schooldays.  I was twelve years old—­too young therefore, by far, to estimate its character, political or social, correctly.  I only remember that it filled me with the deepest astonishment.  Never having witnessed any kind of disturbance, I had not the faintest notion what a revolution might be like.  I had always seen the King and the Royal Family treated with a respect which, indeed, they have never forfeited, and I was a hundred miles from the thought that they could possibly be banished.  It is a fact, nevertheless, that the beginning of 1830 differed from other years, and that something seemed to be brewing.  Strange remarks were made at school, over and over again, even among us little ones; our tutors, all of them connected with the press, were what was called in those days “dans le mouvement”—­abreast of the times, and they never stopped talking politics.  Where were they not talked, indeed?  It was a downright disease.  The speech of M. de Salvandy, on the occasion of the fete given by my father at the Palais-Royal in May, that year, in honour of the King of Naples, my uncle and godfather, may be called to mind.  “A real Neapolitan fete indeed, Sire!—­for we are dancing on a volcano.”

And a truly Neapolitan fete it was, not only on account of the presence of the sovereigns of the two Sicilies, and of the ideal beauty of the night, but also by reason of the tarantella, a sort of ballet, which was danced in the middle of the evening, by Madame la Duchesse de Berri and thirty of the most beautiful young ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in Neapolitan costume, among whom I think I still see, compact of grace and elegance, the lovely Denise du Roure, soon to become Comtesse d’Hulst.  The tarantella was followed by a polonaise, led by Comte Rodolphe Appony and the Duchesse de Rauzan, resplendent in blue and gold.  A more sedate dance, this, performed by noble lords and ladies, all in Hungarian costume, and escorted by pages, bearing their respective banners.  It would have been hard to say which of the ladies taking part in these two dances bore off the palm for aristocratic beauty.  They were worthy representatives of their race.