*
The murderer Louvel was a little man with a dirty and sorry face, such as one sees by the thousand on the Paris streets. He had something of the cur; he had a snarling and solitary air. It is probable that Louvel was not a member of any society: he was one of a sect, not of a plot; he belonged to one of those conspiracies of ideas, the members of which may sometimes come together, but most frequently act one by one, according to their individual impulse. His brain fed on a single thought, even as a heart slakes its thirst on a single passion. His act was consequent upon his principles: he would have liked to kill the whole Dynasty at one blow. Louvel has his admirers even as Robespierre has his. Our material society, the accomplice of every material enterprise, soon destroyed the chapel raised in expiation of a crime. We abhor moral sentiment, because in it we behold the enemy and the accuser: tears would have appeared a recrimination; we were in a hurry to deprive a few Christians of a cross to weep at.
On the 18th of February 1820, the Conservateur[47] paid the tribute of its regrets to the memory of M. le Duc de Berry. The article concluded with this verse of Racine's:
Si du sang de nos rois quelque goutte échappée[48]!
Alas, that drop of blood now flows away on foreign soil!
Fall of the Ministry.
M. Decazes fell. The censorship followed and, notwithstanding the assassination of the Duc de Berry, I voted against it. The Conservateur refusing to be soiled by it, that paper came to an end with the following apostrophe to the Duc de Berry:
"O Christian Prince, worthy son of St. Louis, illustrious scion of so many kings, before descending into your last resting-place, receive our last homage! You loved, you read a work which the censorship is about to destroy. You sometimes told us that that work was saving the Throne: alas, we were not able to save your days! We are about to cease to write at the moment when you cease to exist: we shall have the sorrowful consolation of connecting the end of our labours with the end of your life[49]."