It was a great joy and a great happiness to the assembled French spectators to greet, with Bossuet's greeting, the generous vessels, ready to break the slave's chain with their prows; a victory increased by the cry uttered by the Eagle of Meaux when he announced the future success to the Great King, as though to console him one day in his tomb for the dispersal of his dynasty:
"Thou shalt yield, or fall under that victor, Algiers, rich in the spoils of Christianity. Thou saidst in thy heart of greed:
"I hold the sea under my laws and the nations are my prey!'
"The swiftness of thy ships gave thee confidence, but thou shalt see thyself attacked in thy walls like a ravenous bird which one hunts amid its rocks and in its nest, where it shares its booty among its young. Already thou art releasing thy slaves. Louis has shattered the irons under which thou wert loading his subjects, who are born to be free under his glorious empire. The astonished pilots cry beforehand:
"'Who is like unto Tyre? And yet she kept silence in the midst of the sea[181].'"
O splendid words, could you not retard the crumbling of the Throne? Nations proceed towards their destinies; like certain of Dante's shades, they cannot possibly be arrested, even in good fortune.
Those vessels, which carried liberty to the seas of Numidia, were carrying away the Legitimacy; that fleet under the White Flag was the Monarchy getting under way, sailing from the ports where St. Louis embarked when Death called him to Carthage. O slaves delivered from imprisonment, they who have restored you to your native land have lost their country; they who have saved you from eternal banishment are banished. The master of that huge fleet has crossed the sea on a bark as a fugitive, and France can say to him what Cornelia said to Pompey:
"It is indeed the work of my fortune, not of thine, that I see thee now reduced to one small ship where thou hadst wished to go before the breeze with five hundred sail."
Had I not friends among that crowd which, on the beach of Toulon, followed with its eyes the fleet setting sail for Africa? Did not M. du Plessix, my brother-in-law's brother, receive on board his ship a charming woman, Madame Lenormant, who was awaiting the return of the friend[182] of Champollion[183]? What came of that flight executed in Africa, executed at a single swoop? Let us listen to M. de Penhoen[184], my fellow-Breton:
"Not two months had elapsed since we saw that same banner wave in front of those same shores over five hundred ships. Then, sixty thousand men were impatient to go to unfurl it on the battle-field in Africa. To-day, a few sick, a few wounded, painfully dragging themselves along the deck of our frigate, formed its only retinue.... At the moment when the guard took up arms, according to custom, to salute the flag as it was hoisted or lowered, all conversation ceased on deck. I uncovered with the same respect that I should have shown to the old King himself. I knelt within my heart before the majesty of great misfortunes, of which I was sadly contemplating the symbol[185]."
The session of 1830 opened on the 2nd of March. In the Speech from the Throne, the King was made to say:
"If culpable manœuvres should raise in the way of my Government obstacles which I cannot, or, rather, which I will not anticipate, I shall find the means of overcoming them[186]."