In the space of three years, from 1826 to 1828, Charles X. named three governors for the Duke of Bordeaux. One, the Duke of Montmorency, never entered on his duties. The others were the Duke de Riviere and the Baron de Damas. The Duke of Montmorency was named in anticipation the 8th of January, 1826, although his task did not begin until the 29th of September. Mathieu de Montmorency, first Viscount and then Duke, was born in 1766. After having been through the war in America, he had adopted the ideas of Lafayette, and had been distinguished by his extreme liberalism. He took the oath of the Jeu de Paume, and was the first to give up the privileges derived from his birth on the celebrated night of the 4th of August. The 12th of July, 1791, he was one of the deputation that attended the solemn transfer of the ashes of Voltaire, and, August 27th, he sustained the proposition to decree the honors of the Pantheon to Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Petit Almanach des Grands Hommes de la Revolution, Rivarol wrote, not without irony:—
"The most youthful talent of the Assembly, he is still stammering his patriotism, but he already manages to make it understood, and the Republic sees in him all it wishes to see. It was necessary that Montmorency should appear popular for the Revolution to be complete, and a child alone could set this great example. The little Montmorency therefore devoted himself to the esteem of the moment, and combated aristocracy under the ferrule of the Abbe Sieyes."
Mathieu de Montmorency did not adhere to his revolutionary ideas. After the 10th of August, 1792, he withdrew to Switzerland, at Coppet, near his friend Madame de Stael. Under the Empire he held himself apart. He had become as conservative as he had been liberal, as religious as he had been Voltairian. Under the Restoration, he was one of the most convinced supporters of the throne and the altar. Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1821, he showed himself a distinguished diplomat, and during the session of 1822 made the Amende Honorable for what he called his former errors.
As he had always been sincere in his successive opinions, the Duke of Montmorency deserved general esteem. His profound piety, his unchanging gentleness, his exhaustless charity, made him a veritable saint. He was the complete type of the Christian nobleman. His name, his character, the very features of his countenance, were all in perfect harmony. The adversaries of the Revolution could not refrain from honoring this good man. On receiving the title of governor to the Duke of Bordeaux, he felt rewarded for the devotion and virtue of his whole life. But he regarded this grave employment as a heavy burden, "an immense and formidable honor, the terror of his feebleness, and the perpetual occupation of his conscience." This was the thought expressed in his reception discourse at the French Academy. The Count Daru replied to him. At the same session M. de Chateaubriand read a historic fragment. It was the first time since leaving the ministry that the celebrated writer had appeared in public, and he chose to do so to adorn the triumph of him whose rival he had been.
The Duke Mathieu de Montmorency died six months before he was to enter upon his functions as governor to the Duke of Bordeaux. It was Good Friday of the year 1826, at three o'clock in the afternoon. Before the tomb in the Church of Saint Thomas Aquinas, his parish, the Duke was praying like a saint, when suddenly he was seen to waver, and then to fall. Those near him ran to him, raised him; he was dead. The news had hardly spread when the church was filled with a crowd of poor people, who wept hot tears over the loss of their benefactor. On the morrow the Duchess of Broglie wrote to Madame REcamier, for whom the deceased had had an almost mystic tenderness:—
"Holy Saturday. Oh, my God! my God! dear friend, what an event! I think of you with anguish. All the past comes up before me. I thought I could see the grief of my poor mother, and I think of yours, my dear friend, which must be terrible. But what a beautiful death! Thus he would have chosen it—the place, the day, the hour! The hand of God, of that saviour God, whose sacrifice he was celebrating, is here!"
Father Macarthy said, in a sermon preached in the Chapel of the Tuileries:—
"Happy he, O God, who comes before Thy altar, on the day of Thy death, at the very hour when Thou didst expire for the salvation of the world, to breathe out his soul at Thy feet, and be laid in Thy tomb!"
Lastly, the Duke de Laval-Montmorency wrote to Madame Recamier:—
"I say it to you, my dear friend, I avow it without false modesty, I never have had any merit or any honor in life, save from action in common with my angelic friend. He alone is happy; he is so beyond doubt; from heaven he sees our tears, our desolation, our homage; he will be our protector on high as he was our friend, our support, upon the earth."