The proposal was not seriously meant. Besides, I was not at all anxious to be present at a family scene; I wished neither to divide relations nor to meddle with dangerous reconciliations. When I half saw a chance of becoming the favourite of one of the two powers, I shuddered; the post did not seem fast enough to take me away from my possible honours. I trembled before the shadow of fortune even as the Philistines trembled before the shadow of Richard's horse.
On the next day, the 28th, I locked myself up at the Bath Hotel and wrote my dispatch to Madame. That same evening, Hyacinthe set out with the dispatch.
On the 29th, I went to see the Comte and Comtesse de Chotek; I found them confounded by the uproar at the Court of Charles X. The Grand Burgrave sent by means of expresses to recall the orders which were delaying the young men at the frontiers. For the rest, those who were to be seen in the streets of Prague had lost none of their national characteristics: a Legitimist and a Republican, politics apart, are the same man. What a noise they made, what joking, what merriment! The travellers came to see me to tell me their adventures. M.—— had visited Frankfort with a German guide, who delighted in the French; M.—— asked him the reason; the guide answered:
"De Vrench gome to Frankfort; dey trink de vine und mague loff to de breddy vifes of de cidicens. Cheneral Aucherau lay a dax of vorty-vun millions on de Down of Frankfort."
Those are the reasons why the French were so much loved in Frankfort.
Breakfast of the young men.
A great breakfast was served at my inn; the rich paid the scot of the poor. They drank champagne on the banks of the Moldau to the health of Henry V., who was covering the roads with his grandfather, for fear of hearing the toasts proposed to his crown. At eight o'clock, having arranged my business, I drove off, hoping never to return to Bohemia in my life.
It has been said that Charles X. had intended to retire to the altar: he had precedents for such a plan in his family. Richer, monk of Senones, and Geoffroy de Beaulieu, confessor to St. Louis, narrate that that great man had thought of shutting himself up in a convent, when his son should have reached an age to take his place on the throne. Christine de Pisan[268] says of Charles V.:
"The wise King[269] had deliberated within himself that, if he could live so long that his son was of age to wear the crown, he would relinquish the Kingdom to him... and turn priest."
Such princes as these, if they had laid down the sceptre, would have been missed as guardians to their sons; and still, by remaining kings, did they make their successors worthy of them? What was Philip the Bold[270] beside St. Louis? All Charles V.'s wisdom turned into madness in his heir[271].