MELUN, November 22, 1830 [3]
We left Sens at half past eight and did not stop to dine, but ate in the carriage. We passed through Fossard, Monteran, and got here about four. The doctor is quite grave about his tricolor and has worn it all day. We have had immense laughing at him. He was very much frightened at Sens, because Papa told him the people of the tricolor. A great many post-boys have it on their hats and all the fleurs-de-lis on the mile-posts are rubbed out.
By this date Charles X, surrounded by his gloomy, ceremonial little court of faithful followers, was playing his nightly game of whist in the melancholy shelter of Holyrood, where he was to remain for the next two years, an insipid, sorrowful figure, distinguished by such dignity as unquerulous passivity can lend to the foolish and unfortunate. Meanwhile, Paris was attempting to vamp up some interest in her new King, who walked the streets with an umbrella under his arm.
PARIS, December 23, 1830
We were in the Place Vendôme to-day, which was full of national guards waiting for the King. We stopped to see him. It looked very gay and pretty: the National Guard held hands in a long row and danced for ever so long round and round the pillar, with the people shouting as hard as they could. It looked very funny, but the King did not come whilst we were there. We heard them singing the Parisienne. The trial is over and the ministers are at Vincennes, going to be put in prison. There have been several mobs about the Luxembourg and the Palais Royal, but they think nothing more will happen now.
Who can hum now the tune of the "Parisienne"? It has not stayed in men's memories like the "Marseillaise"; no doubt it expressed the prosaic, middle-class spirit of the National Guard, which kept a King upon the throne, in his own way just as determined as his predecessors to rule in the interests of his family.
PARIS, February 5, 1831
Mama, Papa, Mary, Lizzy,[4] Charlie, Doddy[5] and I have been to a children's ball at the Palais Royal. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and we danced all night long, but no big people at all danced. We saw famously all the royal people; and Lizzy danced with two of the little princes. The Duke of Orleans and M. Duc de Nemours were in uniform and so were all the other gentlemen. The King and Queen are nice-looking old bodies.[6] It was capital fun and very merry indeed, the supper was beautiful. There was famous galloping.
PARIS, February 15, 1831
This is Mardi gras, the last day of the Carnival. We were out in the carriage this morning to see the masks on the boulevards; there were a great many masks and crowds of people, whilst there were mobs and rows going on in another part of the town. The people have quite destroyed the poor Archbishop's house, because on Sunday night the Duc de Bordeaux's bust was brought, and Mass was said for the Duc de Berry. They have taken all his books, furniture, and everything, and they wanted to throw some priests in the Seine, and they are breaking the things in the churches and taking down the crosses. All the National Guard is out.
These disturbances were the last struggles of the party who had not been satisfied by the spectacle of the son of Philippe Egalité, with the tricolor flag in one hand, embracing the ancient Lafayette on the balcony above the Place de Grève. Their animosity against the Church was the ground-swell of the storm which had washed away Charles X himself. The Sacrilege Law introduced in 1825 had revived the barbarous mediaeval penalty of amputating the hand of the offender. Charles's attempt to reintroduce primogeniture by declaring the French principle of the equal division of property to be inconsistent with the principle of monarchy had irritated the people less than the encouragement he had given to monastic corporations which were contrary to law. The controversy which followed between the ecclesiastics and their opponents was the cause of the repeal of the freedom of the Press; and when he had stifled controversy his next step was the suspension of Parliament. Whence followed the events which so abruptly disturbed his evening rubber at St. Cloud on July 25th.
These outbreaks of the republican anti-clerical party to which Lady Fanny refers were soon calmed; a few weeks later the soldiers had no more work to do, and a grand review was held in the Champ de Mars.