Under the Restoration, the Duke of Doudeauville distinguished himself by an honest liberalism, loyal and intelligent, with nothing revolutionary in it, and by an enlightened philanthropy that won him the respect of all parties. When he was named as director of the post-office in 1822, many people of his circle blamed him for taking a place beneath him. "Congratulate me," he said, laughing, "that I have not been offered that of postman; I should have taken it just the same if I had thought I could be useful." And he added: "It was thought that it would be a sinecure for me. Far from that, I gave myself up wholly to my new employment, and I worked so hard at it, than in less than a year my eyes, previously excellent, were almost ruined. I always occupied fifteen or twenty places, each more gratuitous than the others. To make the religion that I practise beloved and to serve my neighbor, has always seemed to me the best way to serve God. So I believe that I can say without fear of contradiction that I have never done any one harm, and that I have always tried to do all the good possible."
In the month of August, 1824, the Duke of Doudeauville was named minister of the King's household. In this post he showed administrative qualities of a high order. In April, 1827, not wishing to share in a measure that he regarded as both inappropriate and unpopular, the disbanding of the Parisian National Guard, he gave in his resignation. "I did not wish," he said, "to join the Opposition. The popularity given me by my resignation would have assured me a prominent place, but this role agreed neither with my character nor with my antecedents. I resolved on absolute silence and complete obscurity; I even avoided showing myself in Paris, where I knew that manifestations of satisfaction and gratitude would be given to me." King Louis Philippe said one day to Marshal Gerard: "Had they listened to the Duke of Doudeauville, and not broken up the National Guard of Paris, the revolution would not have taken place."
The great lord, good citizen, and good Christian, who, at periods most disturbed by changes of regime, had always been as firm in the application of his principles as he was moderate in his actions and gentle in his method, made himself as much respected under Louis Philippe as under the Restoration. During the cholera, he set the example of absolute devotion and was constantly in the hospitals. He continued to sit in the Chamber of Peers until the close of the trial of the Ministers, in the hope of saving the servitors of Charles X. But when Louis Philippe quitted the Palais Royal to install himself at the Tuileries, he resigned as Peer of France. He no longer wished to reappear at the Chateau where he had seen Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and in a letter to the Queen Marie-Amelie, who had a real veneration for him, he wrote: "My presence at the Tuileries would be out of place, and even the new hosts of that palace would be astonished at it." The Duke of Doudeauville, who died at a great age, in 1841, devoted his last years to good works, to charity, to the benevolent establishments of which he was the president. One day at the Hotel de Ville, he drew applause from an assembly far from religious, by the words we are about to cite, because they discovered in them his whole mind and heart: "A husband would like a wife reserved, economical, a good housekeeper, an excellent mother for his family, charming, eager to please him—him only, adorning herself with virtue, the one ornament that is never ruinous, having great gentleness for him, great strength as against all others; he would wish, in fine, a perfect wife. I should like to believe that there are many such, especially among my listeners, but I should think it a miracle if one of them united all these qualities without having the principles of religion. A woman, pretty, witty, agreeable, would like her husband to think she was so, that he should be as amiable for her, or almost, as for those he saw for the first time; that he should not keep his ill humor and his brusqueness for his home and lavish his care and attention on society; that he should forget sometimes that he is a master,—in some ways a despotic master,—despite the liberalism of the century and the progress of philosophy; that he should be willing to be a friend, even if he ceased to be a lover; finally, that he should not seek from others what he will more surely find at home. Let this tender wife invoke religion, let her cause her husband to love it, let her win him to it; she will get what she hopes for and thank me for the recipe."
Our lady readers will thank us, we hope, for having spoken of a man who gives them such good advice; and it is with pleasure that we have taken the occasion to render homage to the memory of a great lord, who doubly deserved the title, by the elevation of his ideas and the nobility of his sentiments. Such men—alas! they are rare—would have saved the Restoration if the Restoration could have been saved.
XII
THE HOUSEHOLD OF THE DUCHESS OF BERRY
We shall now, commencing with the ladies, throw a rapid glance over the persons who, at the time of the consecration, formed the household of the Duchess of Berry. The Princess had one lady of honor, one lady of the bedchamber, and eleven lady companions, of whom three were honorary. All were distinguished as much by their manners and sentiments as by birth and education.
The lady of honor was the Marechale Oudinot, Duchess of Reggio, a lady of the highest rank, who joined a large heart to a firm mind. Attached, through her family, to the religious and monarchical principles of the old regime, by her marriage to the glories of the imperial epic, she represented at the court the ideas of pacification and fusion that inspired the policy of Louis XVIII. Born in 1791, of Antoine de Coucy, captain in the regiment of Artois, and of Gabrielle de Mersuay, she was but two years old when her father and mother were thrown into the dungeons of the Terror. Carried in the arms of a faithful serving-woman, she visited the two prisoners, who escaped death. She married one of Napoleon's most illustrious companions in arms, the "modern Bayard," as he was called, the Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio, who had received thirty-two wounds on the field of battle, and who, by securing the passage of Beresina, deserved to be called the "saviour of the army." He was wounded at the close of the Russian campaign. Then his young wife crossed all Europe to go and care for him and saved him. She was but twenty. She was only twenty-four when Louis XVIII. named her lady of honor to the Duchess of Berry. Despite her extreme youth, she filled her delicate functions with exquisite tact and precocious wisdom, and from the first exercised a happy influence over the mind of the Princess, who gladly listened to her counsels. Very active in work, the lady of honor busied herself with untiring zeal with the details of her charge. She was the directress, the secretary, the factotum, of the Duchess of Berry. The Abbe Tripied, who pronounced her funeral eulogy at Bar-le-Duc, May 21st, 1868, traced a very lifelike portrait of her. Let us hear the ecclesiastic witness of the high virtues of this truly superior woman.
"She bore," he said, "with equal force and sagacity her titles of lady of honor and Duchess of Reggio. Proud of her blason, where were crossed the arms of the old and of the new nobility, and where she saw, as did the King, a sign, as it were, of reconciliation and peace, she bore it high and firm, and defended it in its new glories, against insulting attacks. An ornament to the court, by her graces and her high distinction, she displayed there, for the cause of the good, all the resources of her mind and the riches of her heart. But none of the seductions and agitations she met there disturbed the limpidity of her pure soul. Malignity, itself at bay, was forced to recognize and avow that in the Duchess of Reggio no other stain could be found than the ink-stains she sometimes allowed her pen to make upon her finger. In her greatness, this noble woman saw, before all, the side of duty."