In the space of three years, from 1826 to 1828, Charles X. named three
governors for the Duke of Bordeaux. One, the Duke of Montmorency, never
entered on his duties. The others were the Duke de Riviere and the
Baron de Damas. The Duke of Montmorency was named in anticipation the
8th of January, 1826, although his task did not begin until the 29th of
September. Mathieu de Montmorency, first Viscount and then Duke, was
born in 1766. After having been through the war in America, he had
adopted the ideas of Lafayette, and had been distinguished by his
extreme liberalism. He took the oath of the Jeu de Paume, and was the
first to give up the privileges derived from his birth on the
celebrated night of the 4th of August. The 12th of July, 1791, he was
one of the deputation that attended the solemn transfer of the ashes of
Voltaire, and, August 27th, he sustained the proposition to decree the
honors of the Pantheon to Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Petit Almanach
des Grands Hommes de la Revolution, Rivarol wrote, not without irony:--
"The most youthful talent of the Assembly, he is still stammering his
patriotism, but he already manages to make it understood, and the
Republic sees in him all it wishes to see. It was necessary that
Montmorency should appear popular for the Revolution to be complete,
and a child alone could set this great example. The little Montmorency
therefore devoted himself to the esteem of the moment, and combated
aristocracy under the ferrule of the Abbe Sieyes."
Mathieu de Montmorency did not adhere to his revolutionary ideas. After
the 10th of August, 1792, he withdrew to Switzerland, at Coppet, near
his friend Madame de Stael. Under the Empire he held himself apart. He
had become as conservative as he had been liberal, as religious as he
had been Voltairian. Under the Restoration, he was one of the most
convinced supporters of the throne and the altar. Minister of Foreign
Affairs in 1821, he showed himself a distinguished diplomat, and during
the session of 1822 made the Amende Honorable for what he called his
former errors.
As he had always been sincere in his successive opinions, the Duke of
Montmorency deserved general esteem. His profound piety, his unchanging
gentleness, his exhaustless charity, made him a veritable saint. He was
the complete type of the Christian nobleman. His name, his character,
the very features of his countenance, were all in perfect harmony. The
adversaries of the Revolution could not refrain from honoring this good
man. On receiving the title of governor to the Duke of Bordeaux, he
felt rewarded for the devotion and virtue of his whole life. But he
regarded this grave employment as a heavy burden, "an immense and
formidable honor, the terror of his feebleness, and the perpetual
occupation of his conscience." This was the thought expressed in his
reception discourse at the French Academy. The Count Daru replied to
him. At the same session M. de Chateaubriand read a historic fragment.
It was the first time since leaving the ministry that the celebrated
writer had appeared in public, and he chose to do so to adorn the
triumph of him whose rival he had been.
The Duke Mathieu de Montmorency died six months before he was to enter
upon his functions as governor to the Duke of Bordeaux. It was Good
Friday of the year 1826, at three o'clock in the afternoon. Before the
tomb in the Church of Saint Thomas Aquinas, his parish, the Duke was
praying like a saint, when suddenly he was seen to waver, and then to
fall. Those near him ran to him, raised him; he was dead. The news had
hardly spread when the church was filled with a crowd of poor people,
who wept hot tears over the loss of their benefactor. On the morrow the
Duchess of Broglie wrote to Madame REcamier, for whom the deceased had
had an almost mystic tenderness:--
"Holy Saturday. Oh, my God! my God! dear friend, what an event! I think
of you with anguish. All the past comes up before me. I thought I could
see the grief of my poor mother, and I think of yours, my dear friend,
which must be terrible. But what a beautiful death! Thus he would have
chosen it--the place, the day, the hour! The hand of God, of that
saviour God, whose sacrifice he was celebrating, is here!"
Father Macarthy said, in a sermon preached in the Chapel of the
Tuileries:--
"Happy he, O God, who comes before Thy altar, on the day of Thy death,
at the very hour when Thou didst expire for the salvation of the world,
to breathe out his soul at Thy feet, and be laid in Thy tomb!"