Book 5 — BOOK IX[283] (continued 2)

"Chateaubriand.

"15 November."

Death of Charles X.

Charles X. is no more:

Soixante ans de malheurs out paré la victime[385]!

Thirty years of exile; death at seventy-nine in a foreign land! So that none might doubt of the errand of misfortune with which Heaven had entrusted that Prince, it was a plague that came to fetch him.

Charles X., at his last hour, recovered the calm, the equanimity which sometimes failed him during his long career. When he learnt the danger that threatened, he was content to say:

"I did not think that this illness would turn so short."

When Louis XVI. set out for the scaffold, the officer on duty refused to receive the will of the condemned man because there was no time, and he, the officer, had to take the King to execution; the King replied:

"That is so."

If Charles X., in other days of peril, had treated his life with the same indifference, what wretchedness would he not have spared himself! One can understand that the Bourbons cling to a religion which makes them so noble at the moment of death; Louis IX., attached to his posterity, sends them the saint's courage to await them beside the coffin. That House knows wonderfully how to die: true, it has been learning death for more than eight hundred years.

Charles X. went away persuaded that he had made no mistake: if he hoped for the divine mercy, it was because of the sacrifice which he believed that he had made of his crown to what he thought to be the duty of his conscience and the welfare of his people; conviction is too rare not to be valued. Charles X. was able to bear himself this witness that the reign of his two brothers and his own were neither without liberty nor without glory: under the Martyr King, the enfranchisement of America and the emancipation of France; under Louis XVIII., representative government given to our country, the Royalty restored in Spain, the independence of Greece recovered at Navarino; under Charles X., Africa left to us in compensation for the territory lost through the conquests of the Republic and the Empire: those are results which remain established in our records, in spite of stupid jealousies and vain enmities; those results will stand out more prominently as we sink lower into the abasement of the Royalty of July. But it is to be feared that those costly ornaments will be for the benefit of past days only, like the garland of flowers on Homer's head discarded with great respect by the Republic of Plato. The Legitimacy to-day seems to have no intention of going further; it appears to be adopting its fall.

The death of Charles X. could be an effective event only by putting an end to a deplorable contest for a sceptre and giving a new direction to the education of Henry V.: now it is to be feared that the absent crown will always be disputed, that the education will be finished without having been virtually changed. Perhaps, by saving themselves the trouble of taking sides, they will fall asleep in habits dear to weakness, sweet to family-life, easy to lassitude, the result of long sufferings. Misfortune perpetuated produces on the mind the same effect as old age on the body: one can no longer move, one takes to one's bed. Misfortune again resembles the executioner of the high decrees of Heaven: it strips the condemned man, snatches the sceptre from the king, the sword from the warrior; it takes the noble's dignity, the soldier's heart, and sends them back degraded into the crowd.

On the other hand, one derives from extreme youth arguments in favour of postponement: when one has much time to spend, one persuades one's self that one can wait, that one has years to play with before events happen:

"They will come to us," one cries, "without our going to any trouble; all will ripen; the throne will come of itself; in twenty years, prejudice will be wiped out."

This calculation might have some justness, if generations did not pass away or did not become indifferent; but a certain thing may appear a necessity at one time and not be even felt at another.

Charles's predecessors.

Alas, how swiftly things fade away! Where are the three brothers whom I have seen reign in succession? Louis XVIII. is at Saint-Denis, with the mutilated relics of Louis XVI.; Charles X. has just been laid, at Gorlitz, in a coffin locked with three keys.

The remains of that King, falling from on high, startled his ancestors; they turned in their sepulchres; drawing closer together, they said:

"Let us make room; here is the last of our number."

Bonaparte did not make so much noise on entering eternal life; the old dead did not wake for the emperor of the new dead. They did not know him.

The French Monarchy connects the Ancient World with the Modern World. Augustulus[386] laid down the diadem in 476. Five years later, in 481, the first dynasty of our kings, in the person of Clovis, was reigning over the Gauls.

Charlemagne, when associating Louis the Débonnaire with himself on the throne, said to him:

"Son dear to God, my years are hastening, even my old age escapes me; the time of my death is drawing nigh. The land of the Franks beheld my birth: Christ accorded me that honour. First among the Franks, I have obtained the name of Cæsar and transferred to the Empire of the Franks the Empire of the House of Romulus."

Under Hugh, with the Third Dynasty, the Elective Monarchy became hereditary. Hereditary right gave birth to legitimacy, or permanence, or duration.

The Christian Empire of the French must be placed between the baptismal fonts of Clovis and the scaffold of Louis XVI. The same religion stood at either barrier:

"Gentle Sicamber, bow thy neck, worship what thou hast burnt, burn what thou hast worshipped," said the priest who administered the baptism of water to Clovis.

"Son of St. Louis, rise up to Heaven," said the priest[387] who assisted Louis XVI. at the baptism of blood.

If there were nothing in France save that old House of France built up by time and of astounding majesty, we could make a finer show than all the other nations in the matter of illustrious things. The Capets were reigning when the other sovereigns of Europe were still subjects. The vassals of our kings have become kings. Those sovereigns have handed down to us, with their names, titles which posterity has accepted as authentic: some are called Augustus[388], Saint[389], the Pious[390], the Great[391], the Courteous[392], the Bold[393], the Wise[394], the Victorious[395], the Well-beloved[396]; others the Father of the People[397], the Father of Letters[398]:

"As it is writ in blame," says an old historian, "that all the good Servian kings could easily go into a ring, the bad kings of France could do so more easily, so small is their number."

Under the Royal Family, the darkness of the Barbarians was dispelled, the language was formed; literature and arts produced their master-pieces; our towns were beautified, our monuments raised, our roads opened, our harbours constructed; our armies astonished Europe and Asia and our fleets covered the two oceans.

Our pride waxes furious at the mere display of those magnificent tapestries in the Louvre; shadows, shadowy embroideries shock us. Unknown this morning, still more unknown this evening, we are none the less persuaded that we efface all that went before us. And yet each fleeting moment asks us, "Who art thou?" and we know not what to reply. Charles X. replied: he went away with a whole era of the world; the dust of a thousand generations is mingled with his; history salutes him, the centuries kneel before his tomb; all have known his House; it has never failed them: it is they who have been wanting towards that House.

The last of the Bourbons.

O banished King, men have been able to outlaw you, but you shall not be driven out by time: you are sleeping your hard sleep in a monastery, on the last plank but yesterday destined for some Franciscan. No heralds-at-arms at your obsequies: none save a troop of bleached and hoary old times; no grandees to fling the emblems of their dignities into the vault: they have done homage for them elsewhere. Mute ages are seated beside your bier; a long procession of past days, with closed eyes, silently mourns around your coffin.

By your side lie your heart and your intestines, snatched from your breast and your loins, even as we lay beside a dead mother the abortive fruit that has cost her her life. At each anniversary, O Most Christian Monarch, O cenobite after death, some brother will recite to you the prayers of the memorial service; you will attract to your eternal Hic Jacet none save your sons banished with you: for even at Trieste the monument of Mesdames is empty; their sacred relics have returned to their country and you have paid to exile, by your own exile, the debt of those noble ladies.

Ah, why do they not to-day bring together so many dispersed remains, even as they collect antiques unearthed from different excavations? The Arc de Triomphe would carry Napoleon's sarcophagus as its crowning, or the bronze column raise motionless victories over immortal remains. And yet the stone carved by order of Sesostris hence-forward buries the scaffold of Louis XVI. under the weight of the ages. The hour will come when the obelisk of the desert shall find again, on the place of the murders, the silence and solitude of Luxor.