Chapter XII: Book XV: 263 (2)

The rumour spread, on the evening of the 2nd, that Charles X. refused to leave Rambouillet before his grand-son was recognised. A multitude gathered in the Champs-Élysées on the morning of the 3rd, shouting:

"To Rambouillet! To Rambouillet! Not one of the Bourbons must escape from it!"

There were rich men mixed among these groups, but, when the moment came, they allowed the "rabble" to set out without them. General Pajol placed himself at their head, taking Colonel Jacqueminot[311] as his chief of staff. The returning commissaries, meeting the scouts of this column, turned on their steps and were then admitted to Rambouillet. The King questioned them on the strength of the insurgents and then, withdrawing, sent for Maison, who owed him his fortune and his marshal's baton:

"Maison, I ask you on your honour as a soldier, is what the commissaries have told me the truth?"

The marshal replied:

"They have told you only half the truth."

[Sidenote: Charles X. at Rambouillet.]

There remained at Rambouillet, on the 3rd of August, 3500 men of the Infantry of the Guard, and four regiments of Light Cavalry, forming twenty squadrons and consisting of 2000 men. The Military Household, Body-guards and so on amounted, horse and foot, to 1300 men: in all, 8800 men and seven batteries consisting of 42 pieces of artillery with their teams. At ten o'clock at night, the signal was sounded to saddle; the whole camp started for Maintenon, Charles X. and his Family marching in the midst of the funeral column, which was scarce lighted by the veiled moon.

And before whom were they retreating? Before a band almost unarmed, arriving in omnibuses, in cabs, in traps from Versailles and Saint-Cloud. General Pajol thought that he was quite lost when he was obliged to place himself at the head of that multitude[312], which, after all, did not amount to more than 15,000 men, with the adjunction of the newly-arrived Rouennese. Half of this band remained on the roads. A few exalted, valiant and generous young men, mingled with this troop, would have sacrificed themselves; the rest would probably have dispersed. In the fields of Rambouillet, in the flat open country, they would have had to face the fire of the Line and of the Artillery; by all appearances, a victory would have been won. Between the people's victory in Paris and the King's victory at Rambouillet, negociations would have been entered upon.

What! Among so many officers, was there not one with sufficient resolution to seize the command in the name of Henry V.? For, after all, Charles X. and the Dauphin were Kings no longer.

If they did not wish to fight, why did they not retire to Chartres? There, they would have been out of the reach of the Paris populace. Or, better still, to Tours, supported by the Legitimist provinces? Had Charles X. remained in France, the greater part of the army would have remained loyal. The camps at Boulogne and Lunéville were raised and were marching to his aid. My nephew, the Comte Louis, was bringing his regiment, the 4th Light Infantry, which left the ranks only on hearing of the retreat from Rambouillet. M. de Chateaubriand was reduced to escorting the Monarch on a pony to his place of embarkation. If, repairing to some town, protected against a first surprise, Charles X. had convoked the two Chambers, more than half of those Chambers would have obeyed. Casimir Périer, General Sébastiani and a hundred others had waited, had struggled against the tricolour cockade; they dreaded the dangers of a popular revolution: what am I saying? The Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, summoned by the King and not seeing the battle won, would have stolen away from his partisans and conformed to the royal injunction. The Diplomatic Body, which did not do its duty, would have done it then by placing itself around the Sovereign. The Republic, installed in Paris amidst all the disorders, would not have lasted a month in the face of a regular constitutional government, established elsewhere. Never has the game been lost with so fine a hand, and, when a game is lost in this way, there is no revenge possible: go talk of liberty to the citizens and of honour to the soldiers after the Ordinances of July and the retreat from Saint-Cloud!

The time will perhaps come, when a new form of society will have taken the place of the present social order, when war will appear a monstrous absurdity, when its very principle will no longer be understood; but we have not reached that stage yet. In armed quarrels, there are philanthropists who distinguish between the species and who are prepared to swoon away at the mere word of civil war:

"Fellow-countrymen killing one another! Brothers, fathers, sons, face to face!"

All this is very sad, no doubt; and yet a nation has often been regenerated and acquired new vigour in intestine discords. None has ever perished by a civil war; many have disappeared in foreign wars. See what Italy was, at the time of her divisions, and see what she is now. It is a deplorable thing to be obliged to lay waste your neighbour's property, to see your own home blooded by that same neighbour; but, frankly, is it much more humane to slay a family of German peasants whom you do not know, who have never had a discussion with you of any kind, whom you rob, whom you kill without remorse, whose wives and children you dishonour with a safe conscience, because this is war? Whatever men may say, civil wars are less unjust, less revolting and more natural than foreign wars, except when the latter are undertaken to save the national independence. Civil wars are based at least upon individual outrages, upon admitted and recognised aversions; they are duels with seconds, in which the adversaries know why they are wielding their swords. If the passions do not justify the evil, they excuse it, they explain it, they give a reason for its existence. How is foreign war justified? Generally, nations cut each other's throats because a king is bored, because an ambitious man wishes to rise, because a minister seeks to supplant a rival. The time has come to do justice on those old common-places of sentimentalism, better suited to poets than historians: Thucydides, Cæsar, Livy are content to utter a word of sorrow and pass on.

[Sidenote: Thoughts on Civil war.]

Civil war, in spite of its calamities, has only one real danger: if the contending factions have recourse to the foreigner, or if the foreigner, profiting by the divisions of a people, attack it; such a position might result in conquest. Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, Constantinopolitan Greece, in our own days Poland offer examples which we must not forget. Nevertheless, during the League, the two parties calling Spaniards and English, Italians and Germans to their aid, the latter counter-balanced each other and did not disturb the equilibrium which the French in arms maintained among themselves.

Charles X. was wrong to employ bayonets in support of his Ordinances; his ministers have no justification to offer, whether they were acting in obedience or not, for having shed the blood of the people and the soldiers, whom no hatred divided, in the same way as the theoretical Terrorists would gladly reproduce the system of the Terror, when no Terror exists. But Charles X. was also wrong not to accept war when, after he had yielded on every point, it was brought to his door. He had no right, after placing the diadem on the brow of his grandson, to say to that new Joas:

"I have made you ascend the throne, to drag you into exile, so that, wretched and banished, you may bear the weight of my years, my proscription and my sceptre."

He was not right at the same moment to give Henry V. a crown and to rob him of France. When they made him King, they had condemned him to die on the soil in which lie mingled the dust of St. Louis and that of Henry IV.

For the rest, after this ebullition of my blood, I return to my reason, and I see in these things no more than the accomplishment of the destinies of humanity. The Court, had it triumphed by force of arms, would have destroyed the public liberties; they would none the less have crushed it one day; but it would have retarded the development of society for some years; all that had taken a wide view of the Monarchy would have been persecuted by the re-established Congregation. In the last result, events have followed the trend of civilization. God makes men powerful according to His secret designs: He gives them faults which undo them when they must be undone, because He does not wish that qualities ill-applied by a false intelligence should oppose themselves to the decrees of His Providence.

The retirement of the Royal Family reduced my part to myself. I no longer thought of what I should be called upon to say in the House of Peers. To write was impossible: if the attack had come from the enemies of the Crown; if Charles X. had been overthrown by a conspiracy from the outside, I should have taken up my pen and, if they had left me independence of thought, I should have undertaken to rally an immense party around the ruins of the throne; but the attack had come from the Crown itself; the Ministers had violated both liberal principles; they had made the Royalty commit perjury, not intentionally, no doubt, but in fact; through this very act they had taken away my strength. What could I put forward in favour of the Ordinances? How could I have continued to extol the sincerity, the candour, the chivalry of the Legitimate Monarchy? How could I have said that it was the strongest guarantee of our interests, our laws and our independence? The champion of the old Royalty, I had been stripped of my arms by that Royalty and left naked to mine enemies.

I was therefore quite astonished when, reduced to this state of weakness, I saw myself sought out by the new Royalty. Charles X. has disdained my services; Philip made an effort to attach me to himself. First, M. Arago spoke to me, in lofty and lively terms, on behalf of Madame Adélaïde; next the Comte Anatole de Montesquiou came one morning to Madame Récamier's and met me there. He told me that Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans and M. le Duc d'Orléans would be delighted to see me, if I would go to the Palais-Royal. They were at that time engaged upon the declaration which was to transform the Lieutenant-generalship of the Kingdom into the Royalty. Perhaps H.R.H. had thought it well to try to weaken my opposition before. I pronounced myself. He may also have thought that I looked upon myself as released by the flight of the three Kings.

[Sidenote: The Duchesse D'Orléans.]

These overtures of M. de Montesquiou's surprised me. However, I did not reject them; for, without flattering myself with hopes of success, I thought that I might utter some useful truths. I went to the Palais-Royal with the lord-in-waiting to the future Queen. I was admitted by the entrance leading out of the Rue de Valois, and found Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans and Madame Adélaïde in their private apartments. I had had the honour of being presented to them before. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans made me sit down beside her, and said to me, off-hand:

"Ah, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, we are very unhappy! If all the parties would only unite together, perhaps we might yet be saved! What do you think of all this?"

"Madame," I replied, "nothing is easier: Charles X. and Monsieur le Dauphin have abdicated; Henry is now the King; Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans is Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom: let him act as Regent during the minority of Henry V., and all is settled."

"But, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, the people are very much excited; we shall fall into anarchy!"

"Madame, may I venture to ask you what are the intentions of Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans? Will he accept the crown, if it is offered to him?"

The two Princesses hesitated to answer. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans replied, after a momentary pause:

"Think, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, of the misfortunes that may happen. All honest men must combine to save us from the Republic. In Rome you might render us such great services, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, or even here, if you do not care to leave France again!"

"Madame is aware of my devotion to the young King and his mother?"

"Ah, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, they have treated you so well!"

"Your Royal Highness would not have me give the lie to my whole life."

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, you do not know my niece[313]: she is so frivolous!... Poor Caroline!... I am going to send for M. le Duc d'Orléans: he will persuade you better than I can."

The Princess gave instructions, and Louis-Philippe arrived after a quarter of an hour. He was badly-dressed and looked extremely tired. I rose, and the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom accosted me with:

"Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans must have told you how unhappy we are."

And forthwith he spun me an idyll on the happiness which he enjoyed in the country, on the peaceful life, so much to his liking, which he spent in the midst of his children. I seized the moment of a pause between two strophes to speak in my turn and respectfully to repeat, in almost the same words, what I had said to the two Princesses.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "that is what I should like! How happy I should be to be the guardian and the upholder of that child! I think just as you do, Monsieur de Chateaubriand: to accept the Duc de Bordeaux would certainly be the best thing to do. I fear only that events will prove more than a match for us."

"More than a match for us, Monseigneur? Are you not invested with full powers? Let us go to join Henry V.; summon the Chambers and the army to your side, outside Paris. The mere noise of your departure will cause all this effervescence to subside, and men will seek a shelter under your enlightened and protective power."

While speaking, I watched Philip. My advice put him ill at ease; I read on his face his desire to be King:

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said, without looking at me, "the thing is more difficult than you think; it won't go like that. You do not know the danger in which we stand. A furious band might indulge in the most violent excesses against the Chambers, and we have no one to defend us." This phrase which M. le Duc d'Orléans let fall pleased me, because it supplied me with a peremptory retort:

[Sidenote: My conversation with the Duke.]

"I can conceive that difficulty, Monseigneur, but there is a sure means of removing it. If you do not think that you can join Henry V., as I was suggesting, you can adopt another course. The session is about to open: whatever proposal the Deputies may make first, declare that the present Chamber does not possess the necessary powers (which is the sheer truth) to dispose of the form of government; say that France must be consulted and a new assembly elected with powers _ad hoc_ to decide so important a question. Your Royal Highness will then be placing yourself in the most popular position; the Republican Party, which at this moment constitutes your danger, will extol you to the skies. In the two months that will elapse before the meeting of the new legislature, you will organize the National Guard; all your friends and the friends of the young King will work for you in the provinces. Then let the Deputies come, let the cause which I am defending be publicly pleaded in the tribune. This cause, secretly favoured by yourself, will obtain an immense majority of votes. The moment of anarchy will have passed, and you will have nothing more to fear from the violence of the Republicans. I do not even see that you will have much difficulty in winning General La Fayette and M. Laffitte to your side. What a fine part for you to play, Monseigneur! You can reign for fifteen years in the name of your ward; in fifteen years, the age of rest will have set in for all of us; you will have had the glory, unique in history, of being able to ascend the throne and of leaving it to the lawful heir; at the same time, you will have brought up that child in the enlightenment of the century and you will have made him capable of reigning over France: one of your daughters might one day wield the sceptre with him."

Philip cast his looks vaguely above his head:

"Excuse me, Monsieur de Chateaubriand," he said; "I left an important deputation to come to talk with you, and I must go back to it. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans will have told you how happy I should be to do what you might wish; but, believe me, it is I alone who am holding back a threatening crowd. If the Royalist Party is not massacred, it owes its life to my efforts."

"Monseigneur," I replied to this statement, so unexpected and so far removed from the subject of our conversation, "I have seen massacres: men who have gone through the Revolution are seasoned. Old soldiers do not allow themselves to be frightened by objects that terrify conscripts."

H.R.H. withdrew, and I went to join my friends:

"Well?" they exclaimed.

"Well, he wants to be King."

"And Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans?"

"She wants to be Queen."

"What did they say to you?"

"One spoke to me of pastorals, the other of the dangers threatening France and of 'poor Caroline's' frivolity; both were good enough to convey to me that I might be of use to them, and neither of them looked me in the face."

Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans wished to see me once more. M. le Duc d'Orléans did not come to take part in this conversation. Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans explained herself more clearly on the favours with which Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans proposed to honour me. She was good enough to remind me of what she called my power over public opinion, of the sacrifices which I had made, of the aversion which Charles X. and his family had always shown me, in spite of my services. She told me that, if I wished to go back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H.R.H. would be most pleased to reinstate me in that office; but that perhaps I would prefer to return to Rome, and that she (Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans) would see me take this last course with an extreme pleasure, in the interests of our holy religion.

"Madame," I replied at once, with a certain animation, "I see that Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans' mind is made up, that he has weighed the consequences, that he foresees the years of misery and of various dangers which he will have to pass; I have therefore no more to say. I have not come here to show any lack of respect to the blood of the Bourbons; I owe, besides, nothing but gratitude to Madame's kindness. Leaving on one side, therefore, the main objections, the reasons drawn from principles and events, I beseech Your Royal Highness to consent to listen to what regards myself. You have been good enough to speak to me of what you call my power over public opinion. Well, if this power is real, it is founded only on public esteem; and I should lose this esteem the moment I changed my flag. Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans would think he was gaining support, whereas he would have in his service only a wretched phrase-maker, a perjurer to whose voice none would hearken, a renegade at whom every one would have the right to fling mud and to spit in his face. To the wavering words which he would stammer in favour of Louis-Philippe, they would oppose whole volumes which he had published in favour of the fallen family. Was it not I, Madame, who wrote the pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, the articles on the _Arrivée de Louis XVIII. à Compiègne_, the _Rapport dans le conseil du roi à Gand_, the _Histoire de la vie et de la mort de M. le duc de Berry?_ I doubt if I have written a single page in which the name of my ancient kings does not appear in some connection and in which it is not surrounded with protestations of my love and fidelity: a matter which bears a character of individual attachment the more remarkable inasmuch as Madame knows that I do not believe in kings. At the mere thought of a desertion, the blushes rise to my face; I would go the next day to throw myself into the Seine. I entreat Madame to excuse the animation of my words; I am penetrated with your kindness; I will keep it in profound and grateful remembrance, but you would not wish to dishonour me: pity me, Madame, pity me!"

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle D'Orléans.]

I had remained standing and, bowing, I withdrew. Mademoiselle d'Orléans had not uttered a word. She rose and, as she left the room, said to me:

"I do not pity you, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, I do not pity you!"

I was astonished at these few words and at the emphasis with which they were spoken.

That was my last political temptation; I might have thought myself a just man according to St. Hilary[314], who declares that men are exposed to the attempts of the devil in proportion to their godliness: _Victoria ei est magis, exacta de sanctis._ My refusals were those of a dupe: where is the public that shall judge them? Could I not have taken my place among the men, virtuous sons of the land, who serve the "country" before all things? Unfortunately, I am not a creature of the present and I am not willing to capitulate with fortune. I have nothing in common with Cicero; but his frailty is no excuse: posterity has declined to forgive one great man his moment of weakness for another great man; what would my poor life have been, losing its only possession, its integrity, for Louis-Philippe d'Orléans?

On the evening of the day on which I had this last conversation at the Palais-Royal, I met M. de Sainte-Aulaire[315] at Madame Récamier's. I did not amuse myself by asking him his secret, but he asked me mine. He had just arrived from the country full of the events of which he had read:

"Ah," he cried, "how glad I am to see you! Here's a fine business! I hope that all of us, at the Luxembourg, will do our duty. It would be a curious thing for the Peers to dispose of the crown of Henry IV.! I am quite sure that you will not leave me alone in the tribune."

As my mind was made up, I was very calm; my reply appeared cold to M. de Sainte-Aulaire's ardour. He went away, saw his friends and left me alone in the tribune: long live your light-hearted and frivolous men of intelligence!

The Republican Party was still struggling under the feet of the friends who had betrayed it. On the 6th of August, a deputation of twenty members appointed by the central committee of the twelve wards of Paris appeared in the Chamber of Deputies to present an address of which General Thiard[316] and M. Duris-Dufresne[317] eased the well-meaning deputation. It was said in this address that "the nation could not recognise as a constitutional power either an elective Chamber appointed during the existence and under the influence of the royalty which it has overthrown or an aristocratic Chamber, the institution of which is in direct opposition to the principles that have caused it, the nation, to take up arms; that the central committee of the twelve wards, having granted, as a revolutionary necessity, only a _de facto_ and very provisional power to the present Chamber of Deputies to discuss any measure of urgency, now calls with all its wishes for the free and popular election of mandatories who shall really represent the needs of the people; that the primary assemblies alone can bring about that result. If it were otherwise, the nation would render null and void all that might tend to impede it in the exercise of its rights."

All this was pure reason; but the Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom was aspiring to the crown, and the fearful and ambitious were in a hurry to give it to him. The plebeians of to-day wanted a revolution and did not know how to make it; the Jacobins, whom they have taken for their models, would have flung the men of the Palais-Royal and the praters of the two Chambers into the water. M. de La Fayette was reduced to impotent wishes: pleased at having caused the revival of the National Guard, he allowed himself to be tossed like an old swaddling-band by Philip, whose wet-nurse he imagined himself to be; he grew torpid with this felicity. The old general was no more than liberty fallen asleep, as the Republic of 1793 was no more than a death's-head.

The truth is that a truncated Chamber, with no special mandate, had no right whatever to dispose of the crown: it was a Convention expressly called together, formed of the House of Lords and a newly-elected House of Commons, that disposed of the throne of James II. It is also certain that that rump of the Chamber of Deputies, those 221, imbued under Charles X. with the traditions of the hereditary monarchy, brought no disposition fitted to the elective monarchy; they stopped it at its commencement, and forced it to go back to principles of quasi-legitimism. They who forged the sword of the new royalty introduced into the blade a straw which sooner or later will cause it to spring.

[Sidenote: The seventh of August.]

The 7th of August is a memorable day for me; it is the day on which I had the happiness of ending my political career as I had begun it: a happiness rare enough to-day to give reason for rejoicing in it. The declaration of the Chamber of Deputies concerning the vacancy of the throne had been brought to the Chamber of Peers. I went to take my seat, which, was in the highest row of arm-chairs, facing the President. The Peers seemed to me at once busy and depressed. If some bore on their foreheads the pride of their approaching disloyalty, others bore the shame of a remorse to which they lacked the courage to listen. I said to myself, as I watched this sad assembly:

"What! Are they who received the favours of Charles X. in his prosperity going to desert him in his ill-fortune? Will they whose special mission it was to defend the Hereditary Throne, those men of the Court who lived in the King's intimacy, will they betray him? They kept watch at his door at Saint-Cloud; they embraced him at Rambouillet; he clasped their hands in a last farewell: are they going to raise against him those hands, still warm with that last pressure? Is this Chamber, which for fifteen years has resounded with their protestations of devotion, about to hear their perjury? And yet it was for them that Charles X. ruined himself; it was they who drove him towards the Ordinances: they stamped for joy when these appeared and when they thought that they had won in that moment of silence which precedes the fall of the thunder."

These ideas rolled confusedly and sorrowfully through my mind. The peerage had become the triple receptacle of the corruptions of the old Monarchy, the Republic and the Empire. As for the Republicans of 1793, now transformed into senators, and the generals of Bonaparte, I expected of them only what they have always done: they deposed the extraordinary man to whom they owed all, they were going to depose the King who had confirmed them in the benefits and honours with which their first master had loaded them. Let the wind turn, and they will depose the usurper to whom they were preparing to throw the crown.

I ascended the tribune. A deep silence fell: the faces of the peers seemed embarrassed; they all turned sidewards in their arm-chairs and looked down at the floor. With the exception of a few peers who had resolved to retire like myself, none dared to raise his eyes to the level of the tribune.

[Sidenote: My last speech in the Peers.]

I reproduce my speech because it sums up my life and forms my principal title to the esteem of posterity:

"Gentlemen!

"The declaration which has been brought to this Chamber is to
me much less complicated than it appears to those of my noble
colleagues who profess an opinion different from mine. There is
one fact in this declaration which appears to me to govern all
the others, or rather to destroy them. Were we under a regular
order of things, I should doubtless carefully examine the various
changes which it is proposed to make in the Charter. Many of these
changes have been proposed by myself. I am surprised only that
the reactionary measure regarding the peers created by Charles X.
should have been proposed to this Chamber. I shall not be suspected
of any fondness for the system by which these 'batches' were
created; and you know that, when threatened with them, I combated
the very menace: but to make ourselves the judges of our colleagues
and to erase whom we please from the list of the peerage, whenever
we find ourselves the stronger party, would seem to me to savour
of proscription. Do they want to destroy the peerage? Be it so: it
better becomes us to surrender our existence than to beg for our
lives.

"I reproach myself already for the few words I have uttered on a
point which, important as it is, becomes insignificant when merged
in the great proposition before us. France is without a guide; and
I am now to consider what must be added to or cut away from the
masts of a vessel which has lost its rudder! I lay aside, then,
whatever is of a secondary interest in the declaration of the
Elective Chamber; and, fixing on the single enunciated fact of
the vacancy of the throne, whether true or pretended, I advance
directly to my object.

"But a previous question ought first to be attended to: if the
throne be vacant, we are free to choose the future form of our
government.

"Before offering the crown to any individual whatever, it is well
to ascertain under what political system the social body is to be
constituted. Are we to establish a republic or a new monarchy?

"Does a republic or a new monarchy offer sufficient guarantees to
France of strength, durability and repose?

"A republic would first of all have the recollections of the
republic itself to contend with. Those recollections are far from
being effaced. The time is not yet forgotten when Death made
his frightful progress among us, with Liberty and Equality for
supporters. If you were plunged again into anarchy, how would you
reanimate the Hercules on his rock who alone was able to stifle the
monster? In the course of a thousand years, your posterity may see
another Napoleon. As for you, you must not expect it.

"Next, in the present state of our manners and of our relations
with surrounding governments, the idea of a republic seems to me
to be untenable. The first difficulty would be to bring the people
of France to an unanimous vote on the subject. What right has
the population of Paris to compel the population of Marseilles
or any other town to adopt the forms of a republic? Is there to
be but one republic, or are we to have twenty or thirty? And
are they to be federative or independent? Let us suppose these
obstacles to be removed. Let us suppose that there is to be but
one republic: can you imagine for a moment, with the habitual
familiarity of our manners, that a president, however grave,
however talented and however respectable he may be, could remain
for a year at the head of the government, without being tempted
to retire from it? Ill-protected by the laws and unsupported by
previous recollections, insulted and vilified, morning, noon
and night, by secret rivals and by the agents of faction, he
would not inspire the confidence which property and commerce
require; he would possess neither becoming dignity, in treating
with foreign governments, nor the power which is indispensable
to the maintenance of internal tranquillity. If he resorted to
revolutionary measures, the republic would become odious; all
Europe would become disturbed and would avail itself of our
divisions, first, to foment them and, afterwards, to interfere in
the quarrel; and we should again be involved in an interminable
struggle. A representative republic is, no doubt, to be the future
condition of the world; but its time has not yet come.

"I proceed to the question of a monarchy.

"A king named by the Chambers, or elected by the people, whatever
may be done, will always be a novelty. Now I take it for granted
that liberty is sought for, especially the liberty of the press,
by which and for which the people have obtained so brilliant
a triumph. Well, every new monarchy will, sooner or later, be
compelled to gag this liberty. Could Napoleon himself admit
of it? The offspring of our misfortunes and the slave of our
glory, the liberty of the press can exist, in security, only
under a government whose roots are deeply seated. A monarchy,
the illegitimate offspring of one bloody night, must always have
something to fear from the independent expression of public
opinion. While this man proclaims republican opinions, and that
some other system, is it not to be feared that laws of exception
must soon be resorted to, in spite of the anathema against the
censorship which has been added to Article VIII. of the Charter?

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"What, then, O friends of regulated liberty, have you gained by the
change which is now proposed to you? You must sink, of necessity,
either into a republic or into a system of legal slavery. The
monarch will be surrounded and overwhelmed by factions, or the
monarchy itself swept away by a torrent of democratical enactments.

"In the first intoxication of success, we suppose that everything
is easy; we hope to satisfy every exigency, every interest,
every humour; we flatter ourselves that every one will lay aside
his personal views and vanities; we believe that the superior
intelligence and the wisdom of the government will surmount
innumerable difficulties; but, at the end of a few months, we find
that all our theories have been belied by practice.

"I present to you, gentlemen, only a few of the inconveniences
attaching to the formation of a republic or of a new monarchy. If
either have its perils, there remained a third course, and one
which well deserved a moment's consideration.

"The crown has been trampled on by horrible ministers, who have
supported, by murder, their violation of the law; they have trifled
with oaths made to Heaven and with laws sworn to on earth.

"Foreigners, who have twice entered Paris without resistance,
learn the true cause of your success: you presented yourselves
in the name of legal authority. If you were to fly to-day to the
assistance of tyranny, do you think that the gates of the capital,
of the civilized world, would open as readily before you? The
French nation has grown, since your departure, under the influence
of constitutional laws; our children of fourteen are giants; our
conscripts at Algiers, our schoolboys in Paris have shown you that
they are the sons of the conquerors of! Austerlitz, Marengo and
Jena: but sons strengthened by all that liberty adds to glory.

"Never was a defense more just and more heroic than that of the
people of Paris. They did not rise against the law: so long as the
social compact was respected, the people remained peaceable; they
bore insults, provocations and threats, without complaining; their
property and their blood were the price they owed for the Charter:
both have been lavished in abundance.

"But when, after a system of falsehood pursued to the last moment,
slavery was suddenly proclaimed; when the conspiracy of folly and
hypocrisy burst forth unawares; when the panic of the palace,
organized by eunuchs, was prepared as a substitute for the terror
of the republic and the iron yoke of the empire, then it was
that the people armed themselves with their courage and their
intelligence. It was found that those 'shopkeepers' could breathe
freely amid the smoke of gunpowder and that it required more than
'four soldiers and a corporal' to subdue them. A century could not
have ripened the destinies of a nation so completely as the three
last suns that have shone over France. A great crime was committed;
it produced the violent explosion of a powerful principle: was it
necessary, on account of this crime and the moral and political
triumph that resulted from it, to overthrow the established order
of things? Let us examine.

"Charles X. and his son have forfeited, or abdicated, the throne,
understand it which way you will; but the throne is not vacant:
after them came a child, whose innocence ought not to be condemned.

"What blood now rises against him? Will you venture to say that
it is that of his father? This orphan, educated in the schools of
his country, in the love of a constitutional government and with
the ideas of the age, would have become a king well suited to our
future wants. The guardian of his youth should have been made
to swear to the declaration on which you are about to vote; on
attaining his majority, the young Monarch would have renewed his
oath. In the meantime, the present King, the actual King would have
been M. le Duc d'Orléans, the regent of the kingdom, a Prince who
has lived among the people and who knows, that a monarchy, to-day
can only exist by consent and reason. This natural arrangement, as
it appears to me, would have united the means of reconciliation
and would perhaps have saved France those agitations which are the
consequence of all violent changes in a State.

"To say that this child, when separated from his masters, would
not have had time to forget their very names, before arriving
at manhood; to say that he would remain infatuated with certain
hereditary dogmas, after a long course of popular education, after
the terrible lesson which, in two nights, has hurled two kings from
the throne, is, at least, not very reasonable.

"It is not from a feeling of sentimental devotion, nor from a
nurse-like affection, transmitted from the swaddling-clothes of
Henry IV. to the cradle of the young Henry, that I plead a cause
where everything would again turn against me anew if it triumphed.
I am not aiming at romance, or chivalry, or martyrdom; I do not
believe in the right divine of royalty; but I do believe in the
power of facts and of revolutions. I do not even invoke the
Charter: I take my ideas from a higher source; I draw them from the
sphere of philosophy of the period at which my life terminates: I
propose the Duke of Bordeaux merely as a necessity of a purer kind
than that which is now in question.

[Sidenote: My speech continued.]

"I know that, by passing over this child, it is intended to
establish the principle of the sovereignty of the people: an
absurdity of the old school, which proves that our veteran
Democrats have advanced no further in political knowledge than our
superannuated Royalists. There is no absolute sovereignty anywhere;
liberty does not flow from political right, as was supposed in the
eighteenth century; it is derived from natural right, so that it
exists under all forms of government; and a monarchy may be free,
nay, much more free than a republic: but this is neither the time
nor the place to deliver a political lecture.

"I shall content myself with observing that, when the people
dispose of thrones, they often dispose also of their own liberty; I
shall remark that the principle of an hereditary monarchy, however
absurd it may at first appear, has been recognised, in practice, as
preferable to that of an elective monarchy. The reasons for this
are so obvious that I need not enlarge upon them. You choose one
king to-day: who shall hinder you from choosing another to-morrow?
The law, you say. The law? And it is you who make it!

"There is still a simpler mode of treating the question: it is
to say, we repudiate the Elder Branch of the Bourbons. And why?
Because we are victorious; we have triumphed in a just and holy
cause; we use a double right of conquest.

"Very well: you proclaim the sovereignty of might. The take good
care of this might; for if, in a few months, escapes from you, you
will be in a bad position to complain. Such is human nature! The
most enlightened and the purest minds do not always rise above
success. Those minds were the first to invoke right in opposition
to violence; they supported that right with all the superiority
of their talent; and, at the very moment when the truth of what
they said has been demonstrated by the most abominable abuse of
force and by its signal overthrow, the conquerors recur to those
arms they have broken! They will find them to be dangerous weapons,
which will wound their own hands without serving their cause.

"I have carried the war into my enemies' camp; I have not gone to
bivouac in the past under the old banner of the dead, a banner
which has not been inglorious, but which droops by the flag-staff
that supports it, because no breath of life is there to raise it.
Were I to move the dust of thirty-five Capets, I should not draw
from it an argument which should be as much as listened to. The
idolatry of a name is abolished; monarchy is no longer a tenet of
religious belief: it is a political form which is preferable at
this moment to every other, because it has the greatest tendency to
reconcile order with liberty.

"Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the
country[318] with my disregarded warnings! It only remains for me
to sit down on the last fragment of the shipwreck which I have so
often foretold. In misfortune I acknowledge every species of power
except that of absolving me from my oaths of allegiance. It is also
my duty to make my life uniform: after all that I have done, said
and written for the Bourbons, I should be the meanest of wretches
if I denied them at the moment when, for the third and last time,
they are on the road to exile.

"Fear I leave to those generous royalists who have never sacrificed
a coin or a place to their loyalty; to those champions of the Altar
and the Throne who lately treated me as a renegade, an apostate
and a revolutionary. Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon
you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him
for the unfortunate master who loaded you with his gifts and whom
you have ruined! Instigators of _coups d'État_, preachers of
constituent power, where are you? You hide yourselves in the mire
from under which you gallantly raised your heads to calumniate the
faithful servants of the King; your silence to-day is worthy of
your language of yesterday. Let all those doughty knights, whose
projected exploits have caused the descendants of Henry IV. to be
driven from their throne at the point of the pitchfork, tremble now
as they crouch under the three-coloured cockade: it is natural
that they should do so. The noble colours which they display will
protect their persons, but will not cover their cowardice.

"In thus frankly expressing my sentiments in this tribune, I have
no idea that I am performing an act of heroism. Those times are
past when opinions were expressed at personal hazard: if such were
now the case, I should speak a hundred times louder. The best
buckler is a breast that does not fear to show itself uncovered
to the enemy. No, gentlemen, we need neither fear a people whose
reason is equal to its courage, nor that generous rising generation
which I admire, with which I sympathize with all the faculties of
my soul, and to which, as to my country, I wish honour, glory and
liberty.

"Far from me, above all things, be the thought of sowing seeds of
discord in France, and that has been my motive for excluding from
my speech every accent of passion. If I could convince myself that
a child should be left in the happy ranks of obscurity in order to
procure the peace of thirty-three millions of men, I should have
regarded every word as criminal which was not consistent with the
needs of the time: but I am not so convinced. Had I the disposal
of a crown, I would willingly lay it at the feet of M. le Duc
d'Orléans. But all that I see vacant is, not a throne, but a tomb
at Saint-Denis.

"Whatever destiny may await M. the Lieutenant-general of the
Kingdom, I shall never be his enemy, if he promotes my country's
welfare. I only ask to retain my liberty of conscience and the
right of going to die where I shall find independence and repose.

"I vote against the declaration."

I was fairly calm when I began my speech, but gradually I was overcome with emotion. When I came to this passage: "Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the country with my disregarded warnings," my voice became troubled, and I was obliged to put my handkerchief to my eyes to keep back tears of love and bitterness. Indignation restored my power of speech in the paragraph that follows:

"Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master who loaded, you with his gifts and whom you have ruined!"

[Sidenote: Its effect on the Peers.]

I turned my glances upon the benches to which I addressed those words. Several peers seemed crushed; they sank down in their arm-chairs till I could no longer see them behind their colleagues seated motionless before them. This speech made some noise: all parties were hurt in it, but all remained silent, because, by the side of great truths, I had placed a great sacrifice. I came down from the tribune; I left the Chamber, went to the cloak-room, took off my peer's coat, my sword, my feathered hat; I unfastened from the last the white cockade and placed it in the little pocket on the left-hand side of the black frock-coat which I put on and buttoned across my heart. My servant carried away the cast-off clothes of the peerage, and I, shaking the dust from my feet, quitted that palace of treachery, which I shall never enter again in my life.

On the 10th and 12th of August, I completed my self-divestment and sent in the different resignations that follow:

"PARIS, 10 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE PRÉSIDENT DE LA CHAMBRE DES PAIRS[319],

"Being unable to take the oath of allegiance to Louis-Philippe
d'Orléans as King of the French, I find myself seized with a legal
incapacity which prevents me from attending the sittings of the
Hereditary Chamber. One mark of the kindness of King Louis XVIII.
and of the royal munificence remains to me: a peer's pension of
twelve thousand francs, which was given me to keep up, if not
brilliantly, at least independently of immediate needs, the high
position to which I was called. It would not be right that I should
retain a favour attached to the exercise of functions which I am
not able to fulfil. I therefore have the honour to resign into your
hands my pension as a peer."

"Paris, 12 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DES FINANCES[320],

"There remains to me, from the kindness of Louis XVII I. and the
national munificence, a peer's pension of twelve thousand francs,
transformed into an annuity inscribed on the ledger of the public
debt and transmissible only to the first direct generation of the
annuitant. Not being able to take the oath to Monseigneur le Duc
d'Orléans as King of the French, it would not be right that I
should continue to receive a pension attached to functions which I
no longer exercise.

"I therefore write to resign it into your hands: it will have
ceased to accrue to me on the day (10 August) when I wrote to M.
the President of the Chamber of Peers that it would be impossible
for me to take the oath required.

"I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."

"PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.

[Sidenote: I resign pension and place.]

"MONSIEUR LE GRAND RÉFÉRENDAIRE[321],

"I have the honour to send you a copy of the two letters which I
have addressed, one to M. the President of the Chamber of Peers,
the other to M. the Minister of Finance. You will there see that I
renounce my peer's pension and that consequently my attorney will
have to receive of this pension only the sum due to the 10th of
August, the day on which I declared my refusal to take the oath.

"I have the honour to be, with high regard, etc."

"PARIS, 12 _August_ 1830.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE DE LA JUSTICE[322],

"I have the honour to send you my resignation as Minister of State.

"I am, with high regard,

"Monsieur le ministre de la justice,

"Your most humble and most obedient servant."

I remained as naked as a little St. John; but I had long been accustomed to live on wild honey, and I did not fear that the daughter of Herodias would have a longing for my grey head.

My gold-lace, tassels, bullioned fringe and epaulettes, sold to a Jew and melted down by him, brought me in seven hundred francs, the net produce of all my grandeurs.

And now, what had become of Charles X.? He was travelling towards his exile, accompanied by his Bodyguards, watched over by his three commissaries, passing through France without exciting even the curiosity of the peasants ploughing their furrows beside the high-road. In two or three small towns, hostile movements were made; in some others, townsmen and women showed signs of pity. It must be remembered that Bonaparte roused no more commotion when going from Fontainebleau to Toulon, that France grew no more excited and that the winner of so many battles narrowly escaped death at Orgon. In this tired country, the greatest events are no longer more than dramas played for our diversion: they interest the spectator so long as the curtain is raised and, when it falls, leave but a vain memory. Sometimes Charles X. and his family stopped at wretched carters' rests to take a meal at a corner of a dirty table where wagoners had dined before him. Henry V. and his sister amused themselves in the yard by watching the chickens and pigeons of the inn. I had said it: the Monarchy was going away, and people stood at their windows to see it pass.

Heaven at that moment was pleased to insult both the victorious and the vanquished party. While it was being maintained that "all France" was indignant at the Ordinances, King Philip was in frequent receipt of provincial addresses sent to King Charles to congratulate the latter "on the salutary measures which he had taken and which were saving the monarchy."

The Bey of Titteria, on his side, sent the following act of submission to the dethroned monarch, who was at that time on the road to Cherbourg:

"In the name of God, etc., etc., I recognise as my lord and
absolute sovereign great Charles X., the victorious; I will pay him
tribute, etc."

It is not easy to imagine a more bitter mockery of both fortunes. Nowadays, revolutions are manufactured by machinery; they are made so fast that a sovereign, while still king on the frontiers of his States, is already no more than an exile in his capital.