As for the Duc de Bordeaux, they would like, at Hradschin, to make of him a King ever on horse-back, ever flourishing his sword. It is necessary, no doubt, that he should be brave; but it is a mistake to imagine that in these times the right of conquest will be recognised, that it would be enough to be Henry IV. to reascend the throne. Without courage, one cannot reign; but one no longer reigns with courage alone: Bonaparte has killed the authority of victory.
An extraordinary part might be conceived by Henry V.; I will suppose that, at the age of twenty, he feels his position and says to himself:
"I can no longer remain inactive; I have the duties of my Blood to fulfil towards the past; but am I then obliged to trouble France because of myself alone? Must I weigh upon centuries yet to come with all the weight of the centuries that are done with? Let us solve the question; let us inspire with regrets those who unjustly outlawed me in my childhood; let us show them what I could be. It but depends on me to devote myself to my country by consecrating anew, whatever be the issue of the contest, the principle of the hereditary monarchies."
Then the son of St. Louis would land in France with a double idea of glory and sacrifice; he would descend upon it with the firm resolve to remain there with a crown upon his head or a bullet in his heart: in the latter case, his inheritance would go to Philip. The triumphant life or the sublime death of Henry V. would restore the Legitimacy, stripped only of that which the century no longer understands and which no longer suits the times. For the rest, supposing the sacrifice of my young Prince made, he would not have made it for me: after the death of Henry V. without children, I should never recognise a monarch in France!
Thoughts on the elder branch.
I have abandoned myself to these dreams, but what I suppose in relation to the resolution to be taken by Henry is impossible: by arguing in this wise, I placed myself, in thought, in an order of things above us, an order which would be natural at a time of elevation and magnanimity, but which would to-day look like the exaltation of romance; it is as though I were to speak at the present time in favour of going back to the Crusades, whereas we have become common-place in the sad reality of a deteriorated human nature. Such is the disposition of men's souls that Henry V. would encounter invincible obstacles in the apathy of France within and in the royalties without. He will therefore have to submit, to consent to await events, unless indeed he decided on a part which men would not fail to brand as that of an adventurer. He will have to enter into the sequence of ordinary facts and see the difficulties which surround him, without, however, allowing them to overwhelm him.
The Bourbons held good after the Empire, because they were succeeding an arbitrary government: can one see Henry transported from Prague to the Louvre after men have grown used to the most complete liberty? The French nation does not, at bottom, love that liberty; but it adores equality: it admits absolutism only for and through itself and its vanity commands it to obey only what it imposes upon itself. The Charter made a vain attempt to cause two nations which had become foreign to one another to live under the same law: Ancient France and Modern France; how would you make the two Frances understand one another, now that prejudices have increased? You would never appease men's minds by placing incontestable truths under their eyes.
To listen to passion or ignorance, the Bourbons are the authors of all our misfortunes; to reinstate the Elder Branch would mean to restore the domination of the castles; the Bourbons are the abettors and accomplices of those oppressive treaties of which, with good reason, I never ceased to complain: and yet nothing could be more absurd than all those accusations, in which both dates are forgotten and facts grossly distorted. The Restoration exercised no influence in diplomatic acts except at the time of the first invasion. It is admitted that men did not want that Restoration, because they were treating with Bonaparte at Châtillon, and that, had he pleased, he could have remained Emperor of the French. When his genius proved obstinate, for want of anything better, they took the Bourbons, who were on the spot Monsieur, as Lieutenant-general of the Kingdom, then took a certain part in the transactions of the day; we have seen, in the life of Alexander, what the Treaty of Paris of 1814 left to us.
In 1815, there was no longer any question of the Bourbons; they had nothing to do with the predatory contracts of the second invasion: those contracts were the result of the escape from Elba. In Vienna, the Allies declared that they were only uniting against one man; that they did not intend to impose any sort of master nor any kind of government upon France. Alexander even suggested to the Congress another King than Louis XVIII. If the latter had not, by coming to seat himself in the Tuileries, hastened to snatch his throne, he would never have reigned. The treaties of 1815 were abominable for the very reason that men refused to hearken to the voice of the Legitimacy, and it was in order to destroy those same treaties that I wanted to rebuild our power in Spain.
The only moment at which we again find the spirit of the Restoration is at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle; the Allies had agreed to take from us our northern and eastern provinces: M. de Richelieu intervened. The Tsar, touched by our misfortune and influenced by his leanings towards fairness, handed to M. le Duc de Richelieu the map of France on which the fatal line had been drawn. I have, with my own eyes, seen that map of Styx in the hands of Madame de Montcalm, the sister of the noble negociator[613].