Right divine was his religion, to which he sacrificed much, and, unquestionably, would have sacrificed his life. When he was living in exile upon the bounty of the Emperor of Russia, he said to his nephew, on the wedding-day of that young Bourbon: "If the crown of France were of roses, I would give it to you. It is of thorns; I keep it." And, indeed, a turn in politics expelled him soon after, in the middle of winter, from his abode, and made him again a dependent wanderer. In 1803, too, when there could be descried no ray of hope of the restoration of the old dynasty, and Napoleon, apparently lord of the world, offered him a principality in landed wealth if he would but formally renounce the throne, he replied in a manner which a believer in divine right might think sublime:
"I do not confound M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded him. His valor, his military talents, I esteem; and I am even grateful to him for several measures of his administration, since good done to my people will ever be dear to my heart. But if he thinks to engage me to compromise my rights, he deceives himself. On the contrary, by the very offer he now makes me he would establish them if they could be thought of as doubtful. I do not know what are the designs of God with regard to my house and myself, but I know the obligations imposed upon me by the rank in which it was his pleasure to cause me to be born. A Christian, I shall fulfill those obligations even to my latest breath; a son of St. Louis, I shall know, taught by his example, how even in chains to respect myself; a successor of Francis I., I desire at least to be able to say, like him, 'All is lost but honor!'"
Again, in 1814, when the Emperor Alexander of Russia urged him to concede so much to the popular feeling as to call himself King of the French, and to omit from his style the words "par la grâce de Dieu" he answered: "Divine right is at once a consequence of religious dogma and the law of the country. By that law for eight centuries the monarchy has been hereditary in my family. Without divine right I am but an infirm old man, long an exile from my country, and reduced to beg an asylum. But by that right, the exile is King of France."
De la Villevielle, Cambacérès, D'Aigre Feuille—A Promenade in the Palais Royal. (Paris, 1818.)
He wrote and said these "neat things" himself, not by a secretary. Among his happy sayings two have remained in the memory of Frenchmen: "Punctuality is the politeness of kings," and "Every French soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack." He was, in short, a genial, witty, polite old gentleman, willing to govern France constitutionally, disposed to forget and forgive, and be the good king of the whole people. But he was sixty years of age, fond of his ease, and extremely desirous, as he often said, of dying in his own bed. He was surrounded by elderly persons who were bigoted to a Past which could not be resuscitated; and his brother, heir presumptive to the throne, was that fatal Comte d'Artois (Charles X.) who aggravated the violence of the Revolution of 1789, and precipitated that of 1830, by his total incapacity to comprehend either. Gradually the gloomy party of reaction and revenge who surrounded the heir presumptive gained the ascendency, and the good-natured old king could only restrain its extravagance enough to accomplish his desire of dying in his own house. Sincerely religious, he was no bigot; and it was not by his wish that the court assumed more and more the sombre aspect of a Jesuit seminary. It is doubtful if there would have been one exception to the amnesty of political offenses if Louis XVIII. had been as firm as he was kind. The reader sees a proof of his good-nature in the picture on the preceding page of Prince Cambacérès, who was Second Consul when Napoleon was First Consul, and Arch-chancellor under the Empire, peacefully walking in the streets of Paris with two of his friends. This caricature has a value in preserving an excellent portrait of a personage noted for twenty years in the history of France.
Family of the Extinguishers—Caricature of the Restoration. (Paris, 1819.)