I would have liked to employ more gravity in my description of those scenes which produced a great revolution, or, to speak more correctly, of those scenes by which the transformation of the world will be hastened: but I saw them; deputies who acted in them could not help showing a certain confusion, when they told me how, on the 31st of July, they went to forge—a king.
To Henry IV., before he became a Catholic, men raised objections which did not degrade him and which were measured by the level of the Throne itself: they told him that "St. Louis had been canonized, not at Geneva, but in Rome; that, if the King were not a Catholic, he would not hold the first place among the kings of Christendom; that it was not seemly that the King should pray in one wise and his people in another; that the King could not be crowned at Rheims, nor buried at Saint-Denis, if he were not a Catholic."
What was the objection raised against Philip before his final election? Men objected that he was not "patriot" enough.
To-day, when the Revolution is consummated, men take offense if one dare remind them of what took place at the start; they fear to diminish the solidity of the position they have taken up, and whosoever does not find in the origin of the incipient fact the gravity of the accomplished fact is a traducer.
When a dove descended to bring the Holy Oil to Clovis; when the long-haired kings were raised upon a buckler; when St. Louis, in his premature virtue, trembled at his coronation while pronouncing the oath to employ his authority only for the glory of God and the welfare of his people; when Henry IV., after his entry into Paris, went to prostrate himself at Notre-Dame, and men saw, or thought they saw, on his right, a beautiful child who defended him and who was taken to be his guardian angel: I conceive that the diadem was a sacred thing; the Oriflamme rested in the tabernacles of Heaven. But, now that a sovereign, on a public square, with hair cut short and hands tied behind his back, has lowered his head beneath the blade to the sound of the drum; now that another sovereign, surrounded by the rabble, has gone to beg votes for his "election," to the sound of the same drum, on another public square: who keeps the smallest illusion touching the crown? Who believes that that soiled and battered monarchy can still impose upon the world? What man, feeling his heart beat ever so little, would swallow power in that cup of shame and disgust which Philip emptied at one draught without a qualm? European monarchy could have continued its life, if in France they had preserved the parent monarchy, the daughter of a saint and of a great man; but her seed has been dispersed: nothing will be born of her again.
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You have seen the Monarchy of the Grève march dusty and breathless under the tricolour flag, in the midst of its insolent friends: see now the Royalty of Rheims retire, with measured steps, in the midst of its almoners and its guards, walking in accordance with the exactest etiquette, hearing no word but words of respect, revered even by those who detested it. The soldier, little though he esteemed it, died for it; the White Flag, laid upon its bier before being folded away for ever, said to the wind:
"Salute me: I was at Ivry; I saw Turenne die; the English knew me at Fontenoy; I made liberty triumph under Washington; I have delivered Greece, and I still wave from the walls of Algiers!"
The Duc D'Angoulême.