The Ball at Sceaux | Page 5

Honoré de Balzac
such
intimate relations with the Sovereign, that one day, as he came in, the
shrewd monarch addressed him thus: "My friend Fontaine, I shall take
care never to appoint you to be director- general, or minister. Neither
you nor I, as employes, could keep our place on account of our
opinions. Representative government has this advantage; it saves Us
the trouble We used to have, of dismissing Our Secretaries of State.
Our Council is a perfect inn-parlor, whither public opinion sometimes
sends strange travelers; however, We can always find a place for Our
faithful adherents."
This ironical speech was introductory to a rescript giving Monsieur de
Fontaine an appointment as administrator in the office of Crown lands.
As a consequence of the intelligent attention with which he listened to
his royal Friend's sarcasms, his name always rose to His Majesty's lips
when a commission was to be appointed of which the members were to
receive a handsome salary. He had the good sense to hold his tongue
about the favor with which he was honored, and knew how to entertain
the monarch in those familiar chats in which Louis XVIII. delighted as
much as in a well-written note, by his brilliant manner of repeating
political anecdotes, and the political or parliamentary tittle-tattle --if the
expression may pass--which at that time was rife. It is well known that
he was immensely amused by every detail of his
Gouvernementabilite--a word adopted by his facetious Majesty.
Thanks to the Comte de Fontaine's good sense, wit, and tact, every
member of his numerous family, however young, ended, as he jestingly
told his Sovereign, in attaching himself like a silkworm to the leaves of
the Pay-List. Thus, by the King's intervention, his eldest son found a
high and fixed position as a lawyer. The second, before the restoration
a mere captain, was appointed to the command of a legion on the return

from Ghent; then, thanks to the confusion of 1815, when the
regulations were evaded, he passed into the bodyguard, returned to a
line regiment, and found himself after the affair of the Trocadero a
lieutenant-general with a commission in the Guards. The youngest,
appointed sous-prefet, ere long became a legal official and director of a
municipal board of the city of Paris, where he was safe from changes in
Legislature. These bounties, bestowed without parade, and as secret as
the favor enjoyed by the Count, fell unperceived. Though the father and
his three sons each had sinecures enough to enjoy an income in salaries
almost equal to that of a chief of department, their political good
fortune excited no envy. In those early days of the constitutional system,
few persons had very precise ideas of the peaceful domain of the civil
service, where astute favorites managed to find an equivalent for the
demolished abbeys. Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine, who till lately
boasted that he had not read the Charter, and displayed such
indignation at the greed of courtiers, had, before long, proved to his
august master that he understood, as well as the King himself, the spirit
and resources of the representative system. At the same time,
notwithstanding the established careers open to his three sons, and the
pecuniary advantages derived from four official appointments,
Monsieur de Fontaine was the head of too large a family to be able to
re-establish his fortune easily and rapidly.
His three sons were rich in prospects, in favor, and in talent; but he had
three daughters, and was afraid of wearying the monarch's benevolence.
It occurred to him to mention only one by one, these virgins eager to
light their torches. The King had too much good taste to leave his work
incomplete. The marriage of the eldest with a Receiver-General, Planat
de Baudry, was arranged by one of those royal speeches which cost
nothing and are worth millions. One evening, when the Sovereign was
out of spirits, he smiled on hearing of the existence of another
Demoiselle de Fontaine, for whom he found a husband in the person of
a young magistrate, of inferior birth, no doubt, but wealthy, and whom
he created Baron. When, the year after, the Vendeen spoke of
Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, the King replied in his thin sharp
tones, "Amicus Plato sed magis amica Natio." Then, a few days later,
he treated his "friend Fontaine" to a quatrain, harmless enough, which
he styled an epigram, in which he made fun of these three daughters so

skilfully introduced, under the form of a trinity. Nay, if report is to be
believed, the monarch had found the point of the jest in the Unity of the
three Divine Persons.
"If your Majesty would only condescend to turn the epigram into an
epithalamium?" said the Count, trying to turn the sally to good account.
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