However, behind his forts, the King lay secure.
As it is our aim to depict in as vivid a manner as possible the strange events of the period, the actions, the passions of individuals and parties engaged, we cannot better describe them than by referring to contemporary documents, of which there is no lack.

It is amusing at the present day to read in the pages of the Moniteur and the Journal des Debats the accounts of the strange scenes which took place.
The year 1884 had opened very tranquilly.

The Court of the Tuileries had been extremely gay.

The three-and-twenty youngest Princes of England, sons of her Majesty Victoria, had enlivened the balls by their presence; the Emperor of Russia and family had paid their accustomed visit; and the King of the Belgians had, as usual, made his visit to his royal father-in-law, under pretence of duty and pleasure, but really to demand payment of the Queen of the Belgians' dowry, which Louis Philippe of Orleans still resolutely declined to pay.

Who would have thought that in the midst of such festivity danger was lurking rife, in the midst of such quiet, rebellion?
Charenton was the great lunatic asylum of Paris, and it was to this repository that the scornful journalist consigned the pretender to the throne of Louis XVI.
But on the next day, viz.