There were still great illusions among those about Charles X., and the
Duchess of Berry had not for a single instant an idea that the rights
of her son could be compromised. They persuaded themselves that the
Opposition would remain dynastic and that the severest crises would end
only in a change of ministry. Nevertheless, even at the court, the more
thoughtful began to be anxious, and perceived many dark points on the
horizon. Certain royalists, enlightened by experience of the Emigration
and Exile, had a presentiment that the Restoration would be for them
only a halt in the long way of catastrophes and sorrow. They mourned
the optimist tranquillity in which some of the courtiers succeeded in
lulling the King. There were courageous and faithful servitors who, at
the risk of displeasing their master and losing his good graces, did
not recoil from the sad obligation of telling him the whole truth. From
the beginning of his reign, Charles X. heard useful warnings, and later
he blamed himself for not having listened better to them. This justice,
however, must be done him, that if he had not the wisdom to profit by
such counsels, he never was offended at the men of heart who dared to
give them to him.
In this number was the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld, son of
the Duke of Doudeauville, son-in-law of Mathieu de Montmorency, charged
with the department of the fine arts, at the ministry of the King's
household. In publishing the reports addressed by him to Charles X.
from his accession to the Revolution of 1830, he writes:--
"These are respectful and tender warnings of which too little account
was taken, and which might have saved the King and France. I put them
down here with the gloomy predictions contained in them, which have
been only too completely realized. They are not prophecies after the
event. We saw in advance the misfortunes of the King, the fall of the
monarchy, the ruin of legitimacy. Each page, then each line, and soon
every word of this part of my Memoirs will be a cry of alarm: 'God save
the King!' Alas! He has not saved him. One is always wrong if one
cannot get a hearing and make one's self believed. It is then, with no
pride in my previsions, but with bitter regret, that I could not get
them accepted, that I recall this long monologue addressed to Charles
X."
From the beginning of the reign, as he foresaw that one day the Chamber
would sign the Address of the 221, and that M. Laffitte would be the
banker of the revolution of July, the Viscount wrote to the sovereign
in December, 1824:--
"The King has two things to combat for the glory and strength of his
rule, the encroachments of the Chamber of Deputies, and the power of
money in Europe. Four bankers could to-day decide war, if such was
their pleasure. Sovereigns cannot seek too earnestly to free themselves
from the sceptre which is rising above their own. The triumph of
moneyed men will blight the character and the morals of France."
M. de La Rochefoucauld added (report of January 31, 1825) this
prediction, which shows to what length his frankness went in his loyal
explanations with his King:--
"We are between two rocks, equally dangerous: revolution with the Duke
of Orleans, and ultraism with the good Polignac. The by-word now is:
'These princes will end like the Stuarts.' Madame de--, who is
agitating against the laws now under discussion, has said: 'Yes, it's
the second throne of the Stuarts.' The Left compare the Archbishop of
Rheims to Father Peters, the restless and ambitious confessor of King
James. It is not easy for me to write thus to the King, and I have
assumed a hard task in promising myself to conceal nothing from him.
Sometimes my heart is oppressed and my hand stops; but I question my
conscience, which seems troubled, and the indispensable necessity of
telling all to the King, that he may judge in his wisdom, decides me to
go on."
How many sagacious warnings given by the brave courtier, or, better, by
the faithful friend, during the year 1825, the year of the coronation:
"The good Madame de M-- of the Sacred Heart was saying the other day:
'We had a King with no limbs, and with a head; now we have limbs and no
head.' It is unheard of, the trouble taken in certain circles to make
out that the King has no will. The future must give to all a complete
refutation; the future must teach them that the King knows how to
distinguish those that betray from those that serve him." (Report of
March 1, 1825). "Does the King wish to run the chances of a complete
overturning by throwing himself into the hands of the ultras? That
would be to fall again under the blows of the Revolution, which counts
on these to push the monarchy into the abyss always held open at its
side."
From 1825, criticism of the King began. He was accused of giving
himself up too much to the pleasures of the chase. The time was
approaching when his enemies would say of him--a cruel play on words:
"He's good for nothing but to hunt," and would translate the four
letters over the doors of houses M. A. C. L. (Maison Assuree Contre
l'Incendie) by this phrase: Mes Amis, Chassons-le.