And now, what had become of Charles X.? He was travelling towards his exile, accompanied by his Bodyguards, watched over by his three commissaries, passing through France without exciting even the curiosity of the peasants ploughing their furrows beside the high-road. In two or three small towns, hostile movements were made; in some others, townsmen and women showed signs of pity. It must be remembered that Bonaparte roused no more commotion when going from Fontainebleau to Toulon, that France grew no more excited and that the winner of so many battles narrowly escaped death at Orgon. In this tired country, the greatest events are no longer more than dramas played for our diversion: they interest the spectator so long as the curtain is raised and, when it falls, leave but a vain memory. Sometimes Charles X. and his family stopped at wretched carters' rests to take a meal at a corner of a dirty table where wagoners had dined before him. Henry V. and his sister amused themselves in the yard by watching the chickens and pigeons of the inn. I had said it: the Monarchy was going away, and people stood at their windows to see it pass.
Heaven at that moment was pleased to insult both the victorious and the vanquished party. While it was being maintained that "all France" was indignant at the Ordinances, King Philip was in frequent receipt of provincial addresses sent to King Charles to congratulate the latter "on the salutary measures which he had taken and which were saving the monarchy."
The Bey of Titteria, on his side, sent the following act of submission to the dethroned monarch, who was at that time on the road to Cherbourg:
"In the name of God, etc., etc., I recognise as my lord and absolute sovereign great Charles X., the victorious; I will pay him tribute, etc."
It is not easy to imagine a more bitter mockery of both fortunes. Nowadays, revolutions are manufactured by machinery; they are made so fast that a sovereign, while still king on the frontiers of his States, is already no more than an exile in his capital.
This indifference of the country for Charles X. points to something more than lassitude: we are bound to behold in it the progress of democratic ideas and the assimilation of ranks. At an earlier period, the fall of a king of France would have been an enormous event: time has lowered the monarch from the height on which he was placed, has brought him nearer to us, has diminished the space which separated him from the class of the people. If men felt little surprise at meeting the son of St. Louis on the high-road like everybody else, this was due not to a spirit of hatred or system, but quite simply to the sense of social levelling which has penetrated men's minds and which has acted upon the masses without their knowing it.
Charles X. at Cherbourg.
A curse, Cherbourg, upon thy ill-omened precincts! It was near Cherbourg that the wind of anger threw Edward III. to ravage our country[323]; it was not far from Cherbourg that the wind of an enemy's victory shattered Tourville's fleet[324]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind of a deceptive prosperity drove Louis XVI. toward his scaffold[325]; it was at Cherbourg that the wind from I know not what shore carried away our last Princes. The coast of Great Britain, on which William the Conqueror[326] landed, witnessed the disembarkation of Charles the Tenth without lance or pennon: he went to Holyrood to find the memories of his youth[327] hung upon the walls of the Stuart palace like old engravings made yellow by time.
*
I have depicted the Three Days as they unrolled themselves before my eyes: hence a certain contemporary colour, true at the passing moment, false after the moment has passed, is diffused over my picture. There is no revolution so prodigious but, described from minute to minute, will find itself reduced to the slightest proportions. Events issue from the womb of things, even as men from the womb of their mothers, accompanied by the infirmities of nature. Misery and greatness are twin sisters: they are born together; but where the confinement is a vigorous one, misery at a certain period dies, and greatness alone survives. To judge impartially of the truth that is to remain, we must therefore place ourselves at the point of view from which posterity will contemplate the accomplished fact.