France in the Nineteenth Century | Page 4

dilly-dallied with the matter. Then I offered to do it without his help.
Said I: 'On the first interview that you and I have without witnesses, put
a million of francs, in bank-notes, on the mantelpiece, which I will

pocket unseen by you. Then leave the rest to me.' Laffitte still fought
shy of it, hesitated, deliberated, and at last decided that he would have
nothing at all to do with it."
[Footnote 1: Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Two Hemispheres.]
Here the gentleman to whom Lafayette was speaking exclaimed, "If
any one had told me this but yourself, General, I would not have
believed it."
Lafayette merely answered, "It was really so,"--a proof, thinks the
narrator, how fiercely the fire of revolution still burned in the old man's
soul.
The last months of Louis XVIII.'s life were embittered by changes of
ministry from semi-liberal to ultra-royalist, and by attempts of the
officers of the Crown to prosecute the newspapers for free-speaking.
He died, after a few days of illness and extreme suffering, Sept. 15,
1824, and was succeeded by the Comte d'Artois, his brother, as Charles
X. This was the third time three brothers had succeeded each other on
the French throne.
Charles X. was another James II., with cold, harsh, narrow ideas of
religion, though religion had not influenced his early life in matters of
morality. He was, as I have said, a widower, with one remaining son,
the Duc d'Angoulême, and a little grandson, the son of the Duc de Berri.
His two daughters-in-law, the Duchesse d'Angoulême and the
Duchesse de Berri, were as unlike each other as two women could
be,--the one being an unattractive saint, the other a fascinating sinner.
Charles X. was not like his brother,--distracted between two policies
and two opinions. He was an ultra-royalist. He believed that to the
victors belong the spoils; and as Bourbonism had triumphed, he wanted
to stamp out every remnant of the Revolution. Constitutionalism, the
leading idea of the day, was hateful to him. He is said to have remarked,
"I had rather earn my bread than be a king of England!" He probably
held the same ideas concerning royal prerogative as those of his cousin,
the king of Naples, expressed in a letter found after the sack of the

Tuileries in 1848.
"Liberty is fatal to the house of Bourbon; and as regards myself, I am
resolved to avoid, at any price, the fate of Louis XVI. My people obey
force, and bend their necks; but woe to me if they should ever raise
them under the impulse of those dreams which sound so fine in the
sermons of philosophers, and which it is impossible to put in practice.
With God's blessing, I will give prosperity to my people, and a
government as honest as they have a right to expect; but I will be a
king,--and that always!"
Charles X. was on the throne six years. He was a fine-looking man and
a splendid horseman,--which at first pleased the Parisians, who had
been disgusted with the unwieldiness and lack of royal presence in
Louis XVIII. His first act was a concession they little expected, and one
calculated to render him popular. He abridged the powers of the
censors of the Press. His minister at this time was M. de Villèle, a man
of whom it has been said that he had a genius for trifles; but M. de
Villèle having been defeated on some measures that he brought before
the Chamber of Deputies, Charles X. was glad to remove him, and to
appoint as his prime minister his favorite, the Prince de Polignac.
Charles Greville, who was in Paris at the time of this appointment,
writes: "Nothing can exceed the violence of feeling that prevails. The
king does nothing but cry; Polignac is said to have the fatal obstinacy
of a martyr, the worst courage of the ruat coelum sort."
[Illustration: CHARLES X.]
Six months later Greville writes: "Nobody has an idea how things will
turn out, or what are Polignac's intentions or his resources." He
appeared calm and well satisfied, saying to those who claimed the right
to question him, that all would be well, though all France and a clear
majority in the Chambers were against him. "I am told," says Charles
Greville, "that there is no revolutionary spirit abroad, but a strong
determination to provide for the stability of existing institutions, and
disgust at the obstinacy and the pretensions of the king. It seems also
that a desire to substitute the Orleans for the reigning branch is
becoming very general. It is said that Polignac is wholly ignorant of

France, and will not listen to the opinions of those who could enlighten
him. It is supposed that Charles X. is determined to push matters to