Ireneus was at Paris when this terrible contest, the result of which was the overturning of a monarchy, began with the crushing of a throne.  He fought with the ardor inspired at once by his love of legitimacy and his innate horror of the revolutionary flag.  On the first day he had the honor of resisting with his company a numerous body of insurgents, and succeeded in protecting the post which had been confided to him.  On the second day, after a desperate contest, the danger of which served only to magnify his courage, he fell from his horse with a ball through his chest.  His soldiers who were devoted to him bore him to a house where he was kindly treated.  A few hours after, a General who had seen him in the battle, sent him the brevet of Major.  It was an empty honor, for the hand which signed this promotion soon renounced all human grandeur and all command.

The wound of Ireneus was severe.  The kind attentions however which surrounded, protected him from danger of death.  As soon as he was beginning to grow well, he went to his mother’s house, where his cure was completed.  There he heard of the new exile of those for whom his father had shed his blood and of the establishment of the new monarchy.  Many of his friends were soon induced to connect themselves with the new monarchy which retained them in service, and even conferred special compliments on them, and they wrote to induce him to follow their example.  Such a thought never entered his mind.  Without partaking of the exaggerated hatred of many of the Legitimists against the new monarchy, he had stated that he would never serve it.  He was not a man to violate a promise.  But he was subject to the danger of inactivity, the greatest torment of active and strong minds.  As an ambitious man examines with great uneasiness the path which leads him to power, as the speculator contemplates the capricious whims of fortune, as the young officer waiting orders looks in every direction for action, did Ireneus.  More than once he resolved to join his fortunes with those of the exiled princes in the arena of public opinion.  They however had submitted to their fate, and no longer appealed to their faithful servants.  The time of Royal crusades had gone by.  Sovereigns made uneasy by the effervescence of revolutions, which like a contagion spread over Europe, had enough to do to secure their own thrones, and had no disposition to ruin themselves in lifting up that of a neighbor.

Madame de Vermondans, after striving in vain to amuse her son, induced him to visit his uncle in Sweden, hoping that travel would restore quiet to his mind.  It was one of those healthful remedies which often escape the observation of science, and are suggested only by the ingenuity of tenderness.  Nothing in certain moral diseases is more efficacious than travel.  He who after having enjoyed all the emotions of active life, finds himself at once condemned to the sterility of idleness, suffers under a perpetual fever.  Within him there is as it were an ever-acting spring he strives with a constant effort to repress.