I replied that, as the King had not thought it expedient to summon his Council, before which I could have set forth my ideas regarding the future of France and the majority of the Duc de Bordeaux, I had nothing more to say.
"His Majesty has no council," rejoined the Duc de Blacas with a tremulous laugh and a self-satisfied look in his eyes; "he has no one but me, absolutely no one."
The Grand-master of the Wardrobe has the highest opinion of himself: a French complaint. To hear him speak, he does everything, he is equal to everything: he married the Duchesse de Berry; he does what he pleases with the Kings; he leads Metternich by the nose; he has Nesselrode[598] under his thumb; he reigns in Italy; he has carved his name on an obelisk in Rome; he has the keys of the conclaves in his pocket; the three last Popes owe their elevation to him; he knows public opinion so well, he measures his ambition so well by his strength that, when accompanying Madame la Duchesse de Berry, he had himself given a diploma appointing him Head of the Council of Regency, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs! And that is how those poor people understand France and the times.
Nevertheless, M. de Blacas is the most intelligent and the most moderate of the band. In conversation he is reasonable; he always agrees with you:
"Is that what you think? It is just what I was saying yesterday. We have absolutely the same ideas!"
He bemoans his slavery; he is tired of business, he would like to live in an unknown corner of the earth, to die there in peace, far from the world. As to his influence with Charles X., don't speak of it to him; they think that he sways Charles X.: they are wrong! He can do nothing with the King! The King refuses a thing in the morning; at night he grants the same thing, and nobody knows why he has changed his mind, and so on. When M. de Blacas tells you these tales, he is telling the truth, because he never thwarts the King; but he is not sincere, because he inspires Charles X. only with those wishes which are in accordance with that Prince's inclinations.
The Duc de Blacas.
For the rest, M. de Blacas possesses courage and honour; he is not without generosity; he is devoted and faithful. By rubbing himself against the high aristocracy and acquiring wealth, he has caught the ways of both. He is very well-born; he comes of a poor, but ancient house, known in poetry and arms[599]. His stiff and formal manners, his assurance, his strictness in matters of etiquette preserve for his masters an air of nobility which one loses too easily in misfortune: at least, in the Museum in Prague, the inflexibility of a suit of armour holds erect a body which would fall without it M. de Blacas does not lack a certain energy; he dispatches ordinary affairs quickly; he is orderly and methodical. A fairly enlightened connoisseur in some branches of archaeology, a lover of the arts without imagination and an icy libertine, he does not grow excited even over his passions; his coolness would be a statesmanlike quality if his coolness were other than his confidence in his genius, and his genius betrays him: one feels in him the abortive great lord, even as one feels it in his fellow-countryman, La Valette, Duc d'Épernon[600].
Either there will or there will not be a restoration: if there is a restoration, M. de Blacas will come back with places and honours; if there is no restoration, the fortune of the Grand-master of the Wardrobe is almost all invested out of France; Charles X. and Louis XIX. will be dead; he, M. de Blacas, will be very old: his children will remain the companions of the exiled Prince, illustrious foreigners at foreign Courts. Praise God for all things!
Thus the Revolution, which exalted and ruined Bonaparte, will have enriched M. de Blacas: that makes amends. M. de Blacas, with his long, impassive, colourless face, is the Monarchy's undertaker-in-ordinary: he buried it at Hartwell, he buried it at Ghent, he buried it again in Edinburgh and he will bury it again in Prague or elsewhere, always attending to the remains of the high and mighty defunct, like those peasants on the coasts who pick up the wreckage which the sea casts up on its shores.