"I did not think that this illness would turn so short."
When Louis XVI. set out for the scaffold, the officer on duty refused to receive the will of the condemned man because there was no time, and he, the officer, had to take the King to execution; the King replied:
"That is so."
If Charles X., in other days of peril, had treated his life with the same indifference, what wretchedness would he not have spared himself! One can understand that the Bourbons cling to a religion which makes them so noble at the moment of death; Louis IX., attached to his posterity, sends them the saint's courage to await them beside the coffin. That House knows wonderfully how to die: true, it has been learning death for more than eight hundred years.
Charles X. went away persuaded that he had made no mistake: if he hoped for the divine mercy, it was because of the sacrifice which he believed that he had made of his crown to what he thought to be the duty of his conscience and the welfare of his people; conviction is too rare not to be valued. Charles X. was able to bear himself this witness that the reign of his two brothers and his own were neither without liberty nor without glory: under the Martyr King, the enfranchisement of America and the emancipation of France; under Louis XVIII., representative government given to our country, the Royalty restored in Spain, the independence of Greece recovered at Navarino; under Charles X., Africa left to us in compensation for the territory lost through the conquests of the Republic and the Empire: those are results which remain established in our records, in spite of stupid jealousies and vain enmities; those results will stand out more prominently as we sink lower into the abasement of the Royalty of July. But it is to be feared that those costly ornaments will be for the benefit of past days only, like the garland of flowers on Homer's head discarded with great respect by the Republic of Plato. The Legitimacy to-day seems to have no intention of going further; it appears to be adopting its fall.
The death of Charles X. could be an effective event only by putting an end to a deplorable contest for a sceptre and giving a new direction to the education of Henry V.: now it is to be feared that the absent crown will always be disputed, that the education will be finished without having been virtually changed. Perhaps, by saving themselves the trouble of taking sides, they will fall asleep in habits dear to weakness, sweet to family-life, easy to lassitude, the result of long sufferings. Misfortune perpetuated produces on the mind the same effect as old age on the body: one can no longer move, one takes to one's bed. Misfortune again resembles the executioner of the high decrees of Heaven: it strips the condemned man, snatches the sceptre from the king, the sword from the warrior; it takes the noble's dignity, the soldier's heart, and sends them back degraded into the crowd.
On the other hand, one derives from extreme youth arguments in favour of postponement: when one has much time to spend, one persuades one's self that one can wait, that one has years to play with before events happen:
"They will come to us," one cries, "without our going to any trouble; all will ripen; the throne will come of itself; in twenty years, prejudice will be wiped out."
This calculation might have some justness, if generations did not pass away or did not become indifferent; but a certain thing may appear a necessity at one time and not be even felt at another.
Charles's predecessors.