The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X. Imbert de Saint-Amand

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СКАЧАТЬ than that of the reverend orator? Regard on either side of the nave these superb mausoleums, these pompous tombs that are but an empty show, and since their dead dwell not in them, contemplate these columns that seem to wish to bear to heaven the splendid testimony of our nothingness! There, at the right of the main altar, descend the steps that lead to the crypt. There muse on all the kings, the queens, the princes, and princesses, whose bones have been replaced at hazard within these vaults, after their bodies had been, in 1793, cast into a common ditch in the cemetery of the Valois to be consumed by quicklime. The great ones of the earth, dispossessed of their sepulchres, could they not say, in the region of shades, in the mournful words of the Sermonnaire:—

      "Death does not leave us body enough to require room, and it is only the tombs that claim the sight; our body takes another name; even that of corpse, since it implies something of the human form, remains to it but a little time; it becomes a something nameless in any tongue, so truly does everything die in it, even the funeral terms by which its unhappy remains are designated. Thus the Power divine, justly angered by our pride, reduces it to nothingness, and, to level all conditions forever, makes common ashes of us all."

      The remains of so many sovereigns and princes are no longer even corpses. The corpses have perished as ruins perish. You may no longer see the coffins of the predecessors of Louis XVI. But those of the Martyr-King, of the Queen Marie Antoinette, of the Duke of Berry, of Louis XVIII., are there before you in the crypt. Pause. Here is the royal vault of the Bourbons. Your glance can enter only a narrow grated window, through which a little twilight filters. If a lamp were not lighted at the back, the eye would distinguish nothing. By the doubtful gleam of this sepulchral lamp, you succeed in making out in the gloom the coffins placed on trestles of iron; to the left that of the Duke of Berry, then the two little coffins of his children, dead at birth; then in two rows those of Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, daughters of Louis XV., those of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, those of the two last Princes of Conde, died in 1818 and in 1830, and on the right, at the very extremity of the vault, that of the only sovereign who, for the period of a century, died upon the throne, Louis XVIII.

      The royal vault of the Bourbons was diminished more than half to make room for the imperial vault constructed under Napoleon III. The former entrance, on the steps of which stand the Heralds-at-Arms at the obsequies of the kings, has been suppressed. The coffin of Louis XVIII. was not placed on the iron trestles, where it rests to-day, at the time of his funeral. It was put at the threshold of the vault, where it was to have been replaced by that of Charles X.; for by the ancient tradition, when a king of France dies, as his successor takes his place on the throne, so he, in death, displaces his predecessor. But Louis XVIII. waited in vain for Charles X. in the royal vault of the Bourbons; the last brother of Louis XVI. reposes in the chapel of the Franciscans at Goritz.

      Charles X. is not alone in being deprived of his rights in his tomb; the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme and the Count of Chambord were so, and also Napoleon III. The second Emperor and Prince Imperial, his son, sleep their sleep in England; for the Bonapartes, like the Bourbons, have been exiled from Saint-Denis. By a decree of the 18th of November, 1858, the man who had re-established the Empire decided that the imperial dynasty should have its sepulture in the ancient necropolis of the kings. Napoleon III. no more, realized his dream than Napoleon I. He had completed under his reign the magnificent vault destined for himself and his race. But once more was accomplished the Sic vos non vobis, and no imperial corpse has ever taken its place in the still empty Napoleonic vault. The opening situated in the church, near the centre of the nave, is at present closed by enormous flagstones framed in copper bands; and as there is no inscription on these, many people whose feet tread them in visiting the church do not suspect that they have beneath them the stairway of six steps leading down to the vault that was to be the burial place of emperors. "Oh, vanity! Oh, nothingness! Oh, mortals ignorant of their destinies!" It is not enough that contending dynasties dispute each other's crowns; their covetousness and rivalry must extend to their tombs. Not enough that sovereigns have been exiled from their country; they must be exiled from their graves. Disappointments in life and in death. This is the last word of divine anger, the last of the lessons of Providence.

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THE KING

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      Born at Versailles, the 9th of October, 1757, Charles X., King of France and Navarre, was entering his sixty-eighth year at the time of his accession to the throne. According to the portrait traced by Lamartine, "he had kept beneath the first frosts of age the freshness, the stature, the suppleness, and beauty of youth." His health was excellent, and but for the color of his hair—almost white—he would hardly have been given more than fifty years. As alert as his predecessor was immobile, an untiring hunter, a bold rider, sitting his horse with the grace of a young man, a kindly talker, an affable sovereign, this survivor of the court of Versailles, this familiar of the Petit-Trianon, this friend of Marie Antoinette, of the Princess of Lamballe, of the Duchess of Polignac, of the Duke of Lauzun, of the Prince de Ligne, preserved, despite his devotedness, a great social prestige. He perpetuated the traditions of the elegance of the old regime. Having lived much in the society of women, his politeness toward them was exquisite. This former voluptuary preserved only the good side of gallantry.

      The Count d'Haussonville writes in his book entitled Ma Jeunesse:—

      "I have often seen Charles X. on horseback reviewing troops or following the chase; I have heard him, seated on his throne, and surrounded with all the pomp of an official cortege, pronounce the opening discourse of the session; I have many times been near him at the little select fetes that the Duchess of Berry used to give, of a morning, in the Pavilion de Marsan, to amuse the Children of France, as they were then called, and to extend their acquaintance with the young people of their own age. One day when I was visiting with my parents some exposition of objects of art or flowers in one of the lower halls of the Louvre, I saw him approach my mother—whom he had known in England—with a familiarity at once respectful and charming. He plainly wished to please those whom he addressed, and he had the gift of doing so. In that kind of success he was rarely wanting, especially with women. His physiognomy as well as his manner helped. It was open and benevolent, always animated by an easy, perhaps a slightly commonplace smile, that of a man conscious that he was irresistible, and that he could, with a few amiable words, overcome all obstacles."

      The fiercest adversaries of Charles X. never denied the attraction emanating from his whole personality, the chief secret of which was kindliness. In his constant desire to charm every one that approached him, he had a certain something like feminine coquetry. The Count of Puymaigre, who, being the Prefect of the Oise, saw him often at the Chateau of Compiegne, says:—

      "If the imposing tone of Louis XVIII. intimidated, it was not so with Charles X.; there was rather danger of forgetting, pacing the room with him, that one was talking with a king."

      Yet, whatever may be asserted, the new monarch never dreamed of restoring the old regime. We do not believe that for a single instant he had the insensate idea of putting things back to where they were before 1789. His favorite minister, M. de Villele, was not one of the great nobles, and the men who were to take the chief parts in the consecration were of plebeian origin. The impartial historian of the Restoration, M. de Viel-Castel, remarked it:—

      "Charles X. by this fact alone, that for three years he had actively shared in affairs and saw the difficulty of them better, by the fact that he was no longer exasperated by the heat of the struggle and by impatience at the political nullity to which events had so long condemned him, had laid aside a part of his former exaggeration. In the lively satisfaction he felt in entering СКАЧАТЬ