Passing from this general observation to particular facts, I show, in my reasoning, that they might deal with Madame la Duchesse de Berry by arbitrary measures, regarding her as a prisoner of police, of war, of State, or asking the Chambers to pass a bill of attainder; that they might bring her within the competence of the laws by applying to her the Briqueville Law of Exception or the common law of the Code; that they might regard her person as inviolable and sacred. The ministers maintained the first opinion, the men of July the second, the Royalists the third.
I go through the several suppositions: I prove that, if Madame la Duchesse de Berry made a descent upon France, she had been drawn thither only because she heard men's opinions asking for a different present, calling for a different future.
False to its popular extraction, the revolution proceeding from the Days of July repudiated glory and courted shame. Except in a few hearts worthy of giving it an asylum, liberty, become the object of the derision of those who made it their rallying-cry, that liberty which buffoons bandy about with kicks, that liberty strangled after dishonour by the tourniquet of the laws of exception will, through its destruction, transform the Revolution of 1830 into a cynical fraud.
Thereupon, and to deliver us all, Madame la Duchesse de Berry arrived. Fortune betrayed her; a Jew sold her; a minister bought her[486]. If they are not willing to proceed against her by police measures, the only alternative is to indict her at the assizes. I suppose this to have been done, and I bring on the stage the Princess's defending counsel; then, after making the defending counsel speak, I address the counsel for the prosecution:
My pamphlet.
"Advocate.... stand up....
"Establish learnedly that Caroline Ferdinande of Sicily, Widow de Berry, niece of the late Marie-Antoinette of Austria, Widow Capet, is guilty of opposition to a man, the reputed uncle and guardian of an orphan called Henry, which uncle and guardian is said, according to the calumnious allegation of the prisoner, unlawfully to detain the crown of a ward, which ward impudently pretends to have been King from the day of the abdication of the ex-King Charles X. and the ex-Dauphin till the day of the election of the King of the French....
"In support of your argument, let the judges first call up Louis-Philippe as evidence for or against the prisoner, unless he prefer to excuse himself as a kinsman. Next, let the judges confront the prisoner and the descendant of the Great Traitor; let the Iscariot into whom Satan had entered[487] say how many pieces of silver he received for the bargain.
... Then it will be proved, by those who have examined the spot, that the prisoner for six hours suffered the Gehenna of fire in a space too narrow for her, in which four people could hardly breathe, which caused the tortured person contumeliously to say that they 'were making war upon her as though she were a St. Laurence[488]. Now, Caroline Ferdinande being pressed by her accomplices against the red-hot slab, her clothes twice caught fire, and, at each blow of the gendarmes on the outside of the fiery furnace, the shock was communicated to the prisoner's heart, causing her to vomit blood.
"Next, in the presence of the image of Christ, they will lay on the desk, as a piece of direct evidence, the burnt garments: for there must always be lots cast upon garments in these Judas bargains."
*
Madame la Duchesse de Berry was set at liberty by an arbitrary act of the authorities, after they thought that they had dishonoured her. The picture which I drew of the proceedings made Philip see the invidiousness of a public trial and determined him to grant a pardon to which he believed that he had attached a punishment: the pagans, under Severus[489], used to throw to the lions a newly-delivered young Christian woman. My pamphlet, of which only some phrases survive, had its important historical result.
I am melted again, as I copy out the apostrophe which ends my work; it is, I admit, a foolish waste of tears:
"Illustrious captive of Blaye, Madame! May your heroic presence in a land which knows something of heroism lead France to repeat to you what my political independence has won for me the right to say:
"'Madame, your son is my King!'
"If Providence inflict yet a few hours upon me, shall I behold your triumphs, after having had the honour of embracing your adversities? Shall I receive that guerdon of my faith? At the moment when you return happy, I would joyfully go to end in retirement the days commenced in exile. Alas, I am disconsolate to be able to do nothing for your present destinies! My words die away in mere waste around the walls of your prison: the noise of the winds, of the waves and of men, at the foot of the lonely fortress, will not even allow the last accents of a faithful voice to ascend to where you are."