"That's true, Monseigneur: what happened in the year 1593?"
"Pooh!" exclaimed the young Prince. "The abjuration of Henry IV.[579]"
Mademoiselle turned red at not having been able to answer first.
Eight o'clock struck: the Baron de Damas' voice cut short our conversation, just as when the hammer of the clock, striking ten, used to arrest my father's steps in the great hall at Combourg.
Dear children, the old crusader has told you his adventures in Palestine, but not by the fire-side in the Castle of Queen Blanche[580]! To find you, he came knocking with his palmer's staff and his dusty sandals at the foreigner's icy threshold. Blondel[581] has sung in vain at the foot of the tower of the Dukes of Austria[582]: his voice could not open the road to the mother-land for you. Young outlaws, the traveller to distant lands has concealed a part of his story from you: he has not told you that, a poet and prophet, he dragged through the forests of Florida and on the mountains of Judea as much despair, sadness and passion as you have hope, gladness and innocence; that there was a day when, like Julian, he threw his blood at Heaven, blood of which God, in His mercy, has preserved a few drops for him so that he may redeem those which he gave up to the god of curses.
The Prince, taken away by his governor, invited me to his history-lesson, fixed for next Monday, at eleven o'clock in the morning. Madame de Gontaut withdrew with Mademoiselle. Then began a scene of another kind: the future Royalty, in the person of a child, had just drawn me into its games; and now the past Royalty, in the person of an old man, made me assist at its diversions. A rubber of whist, lighted by two candles in the corner of a dark room, began between the King and the Dauphin and the Duc de Blacas and the Cardinal de Latil. I was the only onlooker, with O'Heguerty, the equerry. Through the windows, whose shutters were not closed, the twilight came to mingle its pallor with that of the candles: the Monarchy was dying out between those two expiring lights. Profound silence reigned, but for the shuffling of the cards and a few exclamations from the King, who was angry. Cards were renewed after the Latins in order to solace the adversity of Charles VI.[583]: but there is no Ogier[584] nor Lahire[585] nowadays to give his name, under Charles X., to those distractions of misfortune.
When the cards were over, the King wished me good-night I went through the deserted and gloomy rooms through which I had passed on the previous evening, the same stairs, the same court-yards, the same guards, and, descending the slope of the hill, I returned to my inn, after losing my way in the streets and the dark. Charles X. remained shut up in the black mass which I had just left: nothing can equal the sadness of his forlornness and of his years.
Prague, 27 May 1833.
I had great need of my bed; but the Baron Capelle[586], newly-arrived from Holland, was lodged in a room next to mine and came hurrying to me.
When the torrent falls from on high, the abyss which it hollows out and in which it is swallowed up fixes one's gaze and leaves one dumb; but I have neither patience nor pity to waste on the ministers whose feeble hands let the crown of St. Louis fall into the whirl-pool, as though the waves would carry it back! Those of his ministers who claim to have opposed the Ordinances are the most guilty; those who say that they were the most moderate are the least innocent: if they saw so clearly, why did they not resign?