The morning following the day, or rather the night, on which the events we have just related had occurred, the Duc d'Orleans, who had returned to the Palais Royal without accident, after having slept all night as usual, passed into his study at his accustomed hourthat is to say, about eleven o'clock. Thanks to the sang-froid with which nature had blessed him, and which he owed chiefly to his great courage, to his disdain for danger, and his carelessness of death, not only was it impossible to observe in him any change from his ordinary calm, which ennui only turned to gloom, but he had most probably already forgotten the strange event of which he had so nearly been the victim.
The study into which he had just entered was remarkable as belonging to a man at once a savant, a politician, and an artist. Thus a large table covered with a green cloth, and loaded with papers, inkstand, and pens, occupied the middle of the room; but all round, on desks, on easels, on stands, were an opera commenced, a half-finished drawing, a chemical retort, etc. The regent, with a strange versatility of mind, passed in an instant from the deepest problems of politics to the most capricious fancies of painting, and from the most delicate calculations of chemistry to the somber or joyous inspirations of music. The regent feared nothing but ennui, that enemy against whom he struggled unceasingly, without ever quite succeeding in conquering it, and which, repulsed by work, study, or pleasure, yet remained in sightif one may say solike one of those clouds on the horizon, toward which, even in the finest days, the pilot involuntarily turns his eyes.
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