the southwest in 1833, which gave him the opportunity to save the cloister of Moissac. During the Orleanist Monarchy of Louis-Philippe Vitet's prominence as a politician and bureaucrat emerged. He presented himself unsuccessfully to the Chamber of Deputies on 21 June 1834, as an elected representative for the 6th district of the Seine-Maritime département (Bolbec). But the Chamber declared the election null and void, so he stood for re-election and was successfully seated the following September 13. He made distinguished speeches in the House and defended the policy of the Ministry of the Interior. On 10 April 1836 Vitet was appointed Secretary General of the Ministry of Commerce and as such resigned from his duties as Inspector General of Historic Monuments, which he handed over to Prosper Mérimée, with whom he continued to closely follow questions concerning historic monuments. In 1837, he became a member of the newly created Commission des monuments historiques, which had just been created and which awarded grants for and oversaw the restoration of historic sites. He served as vice-president of the commission from 1839 onwards. Vitet was elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres on 15 December 1839; he was then elected to the Académie Française on 8 May 1845, filling the vacated chair of the late Alexandre Soumet. In 1836, Vitet was appointed simultaneously as Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance and to the Council of State. He also successfully stood for re-election on October 15 that year, and was successively re-elected on 4 November 1837, 2 March 1839, 9 July 1842 and 1 August 1846, serving six terms in all. In the Chamber, he voted for the endowment of the Duke of Nemours, for the census, for the Pritchard indemnity, and wrote the official report for the law on patents. Later career After the Revolution of 1848, Vitet remained faithful to the Orléans family. He ran unsuccessfully in the Constituent Assembly elections in the Seine-Inférieure department, but was elected to the Legislative Assembly on 13 May 1849 and became one of its vice-presidents. He took his place in the monarchist majority and voted for the expedition to Rome; for the Falloux Laws on education; and for the law of 31 May 1850, restricting universal suffrage. Hostile to the policy of the prince-president, he was among the deputies who met at the town hall of the 10th arrondissement of Paris to protest