"I am in despair at seeing the journals recounting hunt after hunt. I
know the effect that produces. I wanted to get at the source of these
mischievous reports, and M-- communicated to me confidentially that
these reports came to him from the court, and at such length that he
always cut them down three-fourths. In this case, it is for the King to
give orders."
Let us put beside this report the following passage from the Memoirs of
the Duke of Doudeauville:--
"I must justify Charles X. in this passion for the chase, so bitterly
laid up against him in that time when malice and bad faith seized on
everything that could injure him. Five whole days every week he
remained in his apartment, busy with affairs of state, working with the
ministers, examining by himself their different reports with a
sensitive heart, much soul, and more intellect than had been believed;
he had much reason and a very sound judgment. We were often astonished
at it in the Council, over which he presided, and which he prolonged
two, three, four, and five hours, without permitting himself the least
distraction or showing any sign of weariness. Often, in the most
difficult discussions, he would open up an opinion that no one had
conceived, and which, full of sagacity, smoothed every difficulty.
"Twice a week, and often only once, when the weather permitted, he went
hunting, perhaps gunning, perhaps coursing. It will be conceded that it
was a necessary exercise after such assiduous toil and occupations so
sedentary.
"I certify that this was the extent of the hunting of which calumny, to
ruin him, made a crime. Every time he went hunting, the Opposition
journals did not fail to announce it, which persuaded nearly all France
that he passed all his time in the distractions of this amusement."
The tide of detraction of the sovereign steadily rose. The Viscount de
La Rochefoucauld perceived it clearly. He wrote to the King, 13th
October, 1825:--
"The interior of France, as regards commerce, agriculture, industry,
wealth, offers a most striking spectacle. Let Charles X., as King and
father, rejoice in his work; but let him reflect that the lightest
sleep would be followed by a terrible awakening."
The 12th of January, 1826, when his father-in-law, the Duke Mathieu de
Montmorency, had just been named governor to the Duke of Bordeaux, M.
de La Rochefoucauld again wrote to the King:--
"Shall I thank the King for the nomination of M. de Montmorency? Six
months ago, it would have been useful. To-day, it is merely good. But
alas, how far is that interesting Prince from the crown! and what
shocks and revolutions he must traverse first. If ever--God watch over
France; the Orleans are making frightful progress."
The signs of the coming storm accumulated in the most alarming manner.
Read this other report of the Viscount de La Rochefoucauld (August 8,
1826):--
"Indifference to religion, hatred of the priests, were the symptoms of
the Revolution. God grant that the same things do not bring the same
results. The unfortunate priests no longer dare to go through the
streets; they are everywhere insulted. Three days since, a well-dressed
man, passing by the sentinel of the Luxembourg said to him, pointing to
a priest: 'Never mind; in a year you'll see no more of all these
wretches.' The poor Cure of Clichy was in real danger, surrounded by
two or three hundred madmen, who cried; 'Down with the black-hats!'
Every day there is a scene of the same sort."
The popularity of Charles X., so great at the beginning of his reign,
was dwindling every day at Paris. M. de La Rochefoucauld did not fear
to declare it to him.
"By what inconceivable fatality is it," he wrote, February 6, 1827,
"that the king amid all the care he takes to ensure the happiness of
his people, is losing from day to day in their love and affection? At
the play--and it is there, to use an expression of Napoleon, that the
pulse of public opinion is to be felt--the most seditious and hostile
allusions are eagerly caught up. Saturday last, verses, of which the
sense was that kings who have lost the love of their people encounter
only silence and coldness, were greeted with triple applause and
furiously encored."
The report of May 12,1827, was like an alarm bell:
"Circumstances are so grave that the calmest minds betray fear
regarding them; there are now but one opinion and one feeling,--doubt
and fear. It is said openly, as eight years since: This branch cannot
keep the crown; it is impossible; who will succeed it? How many things,
great Heavens, done in eight years; how many things forgotten!"
Exposed to an outpouring of enmities and of incessant intrigues, taken
between two fires,--the extreme Right and the Left,--M. de Villele no
longer had the strength to govern. His ministry was about to come to an
end. Later, in retracing in his journal this phase of his career, he
wrote:--
"All that took place was of a feebleness destructive of all government,
and disheartening for him who bears all the responsibility for it, with
the weight of affairs besides. But he was not, and did not pretend to
be, the Cardinal Richelieu. He had not his character, nor his ambition,
nor his superior gifts. He did not even envy them. Had he been quite
different in this regard, to repress and annul his king, to oppress the
daughter of Louis XVI. and the widow of the Duke of Berry, to exile
from France the new Gaston d'Orleans, and his numerous family, to bring
down the heads of the court pygmies,--more dangerous, perhaps, with
their influence over the King and his family and their vexatious
intrigues in the Court of Peers than the Montmorencys and the
Cinq-Mars,--this was a rele to which he never aspired and would not
have accepted."
Charles X. sacrificed M. de Villele, who, however, had his sympathy,
and replaced him with a liberal minister, perhaps with a mental
reservation as to a ministry, before long, from the extreme Right. The
retiring minister wished to remain in the Chamber of Deputies, to
defend his acts. For their part, his successors, fearing his influence
in that body, wished his transfer to the Chamber of Peers, where, in
their judgment, he would be less dangerous. At the last Council of
Ministers attended by M. de Villele, the King passed to him a note in
pencil, announcing that he had called him to the peerage. The statesman
declined, in a note also in pencil. "You wish then to impose yourself
upon me as minister?" wrote the King once more. M. de Villele appeared
moved, and passed to the sovereign this response: "The King well knows
the contrary; but since he can write it, let him do with me what he
will." The next day the Martignac ministry entered on its duties, and
the Duchess of Angoule'me said to Charles X.: "It is true, then, that
you are letting Villele go? My father, you descend to-day the first
step of the throne."