[325] [Lines 482, 483, are not in the MS.]
[326] {566} [Constant (Henri Benjamin de Rebecque, 1767-1830) was the "stormy petrel" of debate in the French Chamber. For instance, in a discussion on secret service money for the police (July 27, 1822), he exclaimed, "Vous les répresentez-vous payant d'une main le salaire du vol, et tenant peut-être un crucifix de l'autre?" No wonder that there were "violens murmures, cris d'indignation à droite." The duel, however, did not arise out of a speech in the Chamber, but from a letter of June 5, 1822, in La Quotidienne, in which the Marquis de Forbin des Issarts replied to some letters of Constant, which had appeared in the Courrier and Constitutionnel. Constant was lame, and accordingly both combatants "out été places à dix petits pas sur des chaises." Both fired twice, but neither "was a penny the worse." (See La Grande Encyclopédie, art. "Constant;" and, for details, La Quotidienne, June 8, 1822. See, too, for "session de 1822," Opinions el Discours de M. Casimir Perrier, 1838, ii. 5-47.)]
[327] [Louis XVIII. (Louis Stanislas Xavier, 1755-1824) passed several years of exile in England, at Goswell, Wanstead, and latterly at Hartwell, near Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire. When he entered Paris as king, in May, 1814, he was in his fifty-ninth year, inordinately bulky and unwieldy—a king pour rire. "C'est ce gros goutteux," explained an ouvrier to a bystander, who had asked, "Which is the king?" Fifteen mutton cutlets, "sautées au jus," for breakfast; fifteen mutton cutlets served with a "sauce à la champagne," for dinner; to say nothing of strawberries, and sweet apple-puffs between meals, made digestion and locomotion difficult. It was no wonder that he was a martyr to the gout. But he cared for nature and for books as well as for eating. His Lettres d'Artwell (Paris, 1830), which profess to be selections from his correspondence with a friend, give a pleasant picture of the roi en exil. His wife, Louise de Savoie, died November, 1810, and in the following April he writes (Lettres, pp. 70, 71), "Mars a maintenu le bien d'un hiver fort doux; point encore de goutte; à brebis tondue, Dieu measure le vent. Hélas! je l'éprouve bien qu'elle est tondue cette pauvre brebis!... je me promène dans le jardin, je vois mes rosiers qui poussent bien; a qui offrirai-je les roses?... Eh bien! je ne voudrais pas que cette goutte d'absinthe cessât, car pour cela il faudrait l'oublier. L'oublier! Ah Dieu! Je suis comme les enfans d'Israël qui disaient: Super flumina Babylonis ... Sion. Mais ajoutons tout de suite: Si oblitus fuero hit, Jerusalem, oblivioni detur dextera mea." In another letter, June 8, 1811, he criticizes some translations of Horace, and laments that the good Père Sanadon has confined himself to the Opera Expurgata. Not, he adds, that he would not have excluded one or two odes, "mais on a impitoyablement sabré des choses délicieuses" (Lettres, p. 98).
To his wit, Chateaubriand testifies (The Congress, etc., 1838, i. 262). At the council, when affairs of state were being discussed, the king "would say in his clear shrill voice, 'I am going to make you laugh, M. de Chateaubriand.' The other ministers fumed with impatience, but Chateaubriand laughed, not as a courtier, but as a human being.">[
[328] {567}[Louvel, who assassinated the Due de Berri, and who was executed June 7, 1820, was supposed to have been an agent of the carbonari. La Fayette, Constant, Lafitte, and others were also suspected of being connected with secret societies.—The Court of the Tuileries, 1815-1848, by Lady Jackson, 1883, ii. 19.]
[eo] {568}
Immortal Wellington with beak so curled.
That foremost Corporal of all the World—
Immortal Wellington—and flags unfurled.—[MS. erased.]
[329] "Naso suspendis adunco."—Horace [Sat. i. 6, 5]. The Roman applies it to one who merely was imperious to his acquaintance.