My agitation necessarily increased still further at the thought that a paltry quarrel made our country miss an opportunity of greatness which it would not find again. Had they said to me, "Your plans will be followed; what you have taken in hand will be carried out without you," I should have forgotten all for France. Unfortunately, I had the belief that my ideas would not be adopted; the event has proved it.
I was, perhaps, in error, but I was persuaded that M. le Comte de Villèle did not understand the society which he ruled; I am convinced that the solid qualities of that able minister were inadequate at the hour of his ministry: he had come too early under the Restoration. Financial operations, commercial companies, the industrial movement, canals, steamboats, railways, high-roads, a material society which has no passion save that of peace, which dreams only of the comforts of life, which wants to make of the future only a perpetual to-day: in this order of things, M. de Villèle would have been king. M. de Villèle wanted a time which could not be his and, from honour, he will have nothing to do with a time which belongs to him. Under the Restoration, all the faculties of the mind were alive; all parties dreamt of realities or illusions; all, advancing or receding, came into tumultuous collision; none purposed to remain where he was; to no earnest mind did the Constitutional Legitimacy seem to be the last word of the Republic or the Monarchy. We felt stirring in the ground under our feet armies or revolutions which came to offer themselves for extraordinary destinies. M. de Villèle was quite alive to this movement; he saw the wings grow which, sprouting from the nation's shoulders, were about to restore it to its element, to the air, to space, immense and light as it is. M. de Villèle wished to keep this nation to the ground, to fasten it down, but he never had the strength for it. I, on the other hand, wished to occupy the French with glory, to fasten them up above, to endeavour to lead them to reality through dreams: that is what they love.
It would be better to be more humble, more prostrate, more Christian. Unfortunately I am subject to err; I have not the evangelic perfection: if a man struck me on the cheek, I should not turn to him the other also.
Had I conjectured the result, I should certainly have refrained; the majority which voted the phrase of refusal to co-operate would not have voted it, if they had foreseen the consequence of their vote. None seriously desired a catastrophe, except a few men apart. There was at first only a riot, and the Legitimacy alone transformed it into a revolution: when the moment had come, it lacked the intelligence, the prudence, the resolution that could still save it. After all, it is a monarchy fallen; many more will fall: I owed it only my fidelity; it will have that ever.
Devoted to the early adversities of the Monarchy, I have consecrated myself to its final misfortunes: ill-fortune will always have for me a second. I have given back all, places, pensions, honours; and, in order that I might have nothing more to ask of anybody, I have pledged my coffin. O stern and rigid judges, virtuous and infallible Royalists, who mixed an oath with your riches as you mix salt with the meats of your banquets to preserve them, have a little indulgence in respect of my past bitternesses; I am expiating them to-day after my fashion, which is not yours. Do you think that, at the evening hour, at the hour at which the toiler seeks repose, he does not feel the weight of life, when that weight is cast back upon his shoulders? And yet, I need not have borne the burden. I saw Philip in his palace, from the 1st to the 6th of August 1830, as I shall tell when the time comes; it but lay with me to hearken to generous words.
Later, if I had been able to repent of doing right, it was still possible for me to retract the first impulse of my conscience. M. Benjamin Constant, the man so powerful then, wrote to me on the 20th of September[335]:
"I would much rather write to you of yourself than of myself, the thing would have more importance. I should like to be able to speak to you of the loss which you are causing all France to sustain by withdrawing yourself from her destinies, you who have exercised so noble and wholesome an influence upon her. But it would be indiscreet of me to treat personal questions in this way, and I am bound, while groaning like every Frenchman, to respect your scruples."
My duties not yet seeming to me to be consummated, I have defended the widow and the orphan, I have undergone the trial and the prison which Bonaparte, even in his greatest angers, spared me. I stand forth between my resignation on the death of the Duc d'Enghien and my cry on behalf of the plundered child; I rest upon a prince shot dead and a prince in banishment; they sustain my old arms entwined in their feeble arms: O Royalists, are you so well attended?
My sacrifices.
But, the more I have tied down my life with the bonds of devotion and honour, the more have I changed my liberty of action for independence of thought; that thought has resumed its nature. Now, outside everything, I appraise governments at their worth. Can one believe in the kings of the future? Is one to believe in the peoples of the present? The wise and disconsolate man of this century without conviction finds a wretched repose only in political atheism. Let the young generations lull themselves with hopes: before hitting the mark, they will wait long years; the ages are proceeding towards the general levelling, but they do not hasten their speed at the call of our desires. Time is a sort of eternity adapted to mortal things; it counts the races and their sorrows for nothing in the works which it accomplishes.