Drawn & Etched by A. Hervieu.
Le Roi Citoyen.
London. Published by Richard Bentley. 1835.
How like a series of conjurer's tricks is their history! Think of this Charles the Tenth in the flower of his youth and comeliness—the gallant, gay, and dissolute Comte d'Artois; recall the noble range of windows belonging to his apartments at Versailles, and imagine him there radiant in youth and joy—the thoughtless, thriftless cadet of his royal race—the brother and the guest of the good king who appeared to reign over a willing people, by every human right, as well as right divine! Louis Seize was king of France; but the gay Comte d'Artois reigned sovereign of all the pleasures of Versailles. What joyous fêtes! ... what brilliant jubilees!... Meanwhile
"Malignant Fate sat by and smiled."
Had he then been told that he should live to be crowned king of France, and live thus many years afterwards, would he not have thought that a most brilliant destiny was predicted to him?
Few men, perhaps, have suffered so much from the ceaseless changes of human events as Charles the Tenth of France. First, in the person of his eldest brother, dethroned and foully murdered; then in his own exile, and that of another royal brother; and again, when Fortune seemed to smile upon his race, and the crown of France was not only placed upon that brother's head, but appeared fixed in assured succession on his own princely sons, one of those sons was murdered: and lastly, having reached the throne himself, and seen this lost son reviving in his hopeful offspring, comes another stroke of Fate, unexpected, unprepared for, overwhelming, which hurls him from his throne, and drives him and his royal race once more to exile and to civil death.... Has he seen the last of the political earthquakes which have so shaken his existence? or has his restless star to rise again? Those who wish most kindly to him cannot wish for this.
But when I turned my thoughts from the dethroned and banished king to him who stepped on in unguarded but fearless security before me, and thought too on the vagaries of his destiny, I really felt as if this earth and all the people on it were little better than so many children's toys, changing their style and title to serve the sport of an hour.
It seemed to me at that moment as if all men were classed in their due order only to be thrown into greater confusion—knocked down but to be set up again, and so eternally dashed from side to side, so powerless in themselves, so wholly governed by accidents, that I shrunk, humbled, from the contemplation of human helplessness, and turned from gazing on a monarch to meditate on the insignificance of man. How vain are all the efforts he can make to shape the course of his own existence! There is, in truth, nothing but trusting to surer wisdom, and to surer power, which can enable any of us, from the highest to the lowest, to pass on with tranquil nerves through a world subject to such terrible convulsions.