France in the Nineteenth Century | Page 2

every one knows Talleyrand's famous saying "that after
five and twenty years of exile they had nothing remembered and
nothing forgot." Of course the old nobility, who flocked back to France
in the train of the allied armies, expected the restoration of their estates.
The king had got his own again,--why should not they get back theirs?
And they imagined that France, which had been overswept by

successive waves of revolution, could go back to what she had been
under the old régime. This was impossible. The returned exiles had to
submit to the confiscation of their estates, and receive in return all
offices and employments in the gift of the Government. The army
which had conquered in a hundred battles, with its marshals, generals,
and vieux moustaches, was not pleased to have young officers, chosen
from the nobility, receive commissions and be charged with important
commands. On the other hand, the Holy Alliance expected that the king
of France would join the despotic sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and
Prussia in their crusade against liberal ideas in other countries. Against
these difficulties, and many more, Louis XVIII. had to contend. He was
an infirm man, physically incapable of exertion,--a man who only
wanted to be let alone, and to avoid by every means in his power the
calamity of being again sent into exile.
He placed himself on the side of the stronger party,--he took part with
the bourgeoisie. His aim, as he himself said, was to ménager his throne.
He began his reign by having Fouché and Talleyrand, men of the
Revolution and the Empire, deep in his councils, though he disliked
both of them. Early in his reign occurred what was called the White
Terror, in the southern provinces, where the adherents of the white flag
repeated on a small scale the barbarities of the Revolution.
The king was forced to put himself in opposition to the old nobles who
had adhered to him in his exile. They bitterly resented his defection.
They used to toast him as le roi-quand-même, "the king in spite of
everything." His own family held all the Bourbon traditions, and were
opposed to him. To them everything below the rank of a noble with
sixteen quarterings was la canaille.
Louis XVIII.'s favorite minister was M. Decazes, a man who studied
the interests of the bourgeoisie; and the royal family at last made the
sovereign so uncomfortable by their disapproval of his policy that he
sought repose in the society and intimacy (the connection is said to
have been nothing more) of a Madame de Cayla, with whom he spent
most of his leisure time.
Before the Revolution, Louis XVIII. had been known sometimes as the

Comte de Provence, and sometimes as Monsieur. Though physically an
inert man, he was by no means intellectually stupid, for he could say
very brilliant things from time to time, and was very proud of them; but
he was wholly unfit to be at the helm of the ship of state in an unquiet
sea.
He had passed the years of his exile in various European countries, but
the principal part of his time had been spent at Hartwell, about sixty
miles from London, where he formed a little court and lived a life of
royalty in miniature. Charles Greville, when a very young man, visited
Hartwell with his relative, the Duke of Beaufort, shortly before the
Restoration. He describes the king's cabinet as being like a ship's cabin,
the walls hung with portraits of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Madame
Elisabeth, and the dauphin. Louis himself had a singular habit of
swinging his body backward and forward when talking, "which exactly
resembled the heavings of a ship at sea." "We were a very short time at
table," Greville adds; "the meal was a very plain one, and the ladies and
gentlemen all got up together. Each lady folded up her napkin, tied it
round with a bit of ribbon, and carried it away with her. After dinner
we returned for coffee and conversation to the drawing-room.
Whenever the king came in or went out of the room, Madame
d'Angoulême made him a low courtesy, which he returned by bowing
and kissing her hand. This little ceremony never failed to take place."
They finished the evening with whist, "his Majesty settling the points
of the game at a quarter of a shilling." "We saw the whole place," adds
Greville, "before we came away; they had certainly shown great
ingenuity in contriving to lodge so great a number of people in and
around the house. It was like a small rising colony."
Louis XVIII. was childless. His brother Charles and himself had
married sisters, princesses of the house of Savoy. These ladies were
amiable nonentities, and died during the exile of their