Note 186 — BOOK XIV[162]

In his Speech from the Throne, Charles X. announced the Algerian Expedition, declaring that the insult shown to the French flag by a barbarous Power would not long remain unpunished, and that a brilliant reparation was about to satisfy the honour of France. The same evening, some friends, among whom was M. Villemain, had gathered in Chateaubriand's drawing-room:

"This," said Chateaubriand, "is one of the things that belong to the old French tradition, to the inheritance of St. Louis and Louis XIV.; this is what the Legitimate Royalty does. In the present crisis, with its wretched instruments, despite its fears, exaggerated, I grant you, it conceives a generous and Christian enterprise, one which I advised in 1816, one which it would have undertaken with me, if it had had the sense to keep me. Yes, this same Algiers which Bossuet shows us destroyed by our bomb-ketches, and which saved its harbour only by handing over its Christian slaves to us, may fall into our hands this summer. We shall do better than Lord Exmouth. Nothing will surprise me of French valour. Only, this delights me without reassuring me. Who knows the unfathomable depths of Providence? It is able with the same blow to lay low the conquered and the conqueror, to enlarge a kingdom and overthrow a dynasty."

(Villemain: M. de Chateaubriand, sa vie, ses écrits, son influence littéraire et politique sur son temps).—B.