Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest
in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition, his just but
perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which pleases
us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who
are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in
any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be
the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in
prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of
success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for us, when
Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work. 1812 commenced to
disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence of that taciturn
legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which
aroused indignation. And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the
presence of those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate
which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after having
deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was loosing its footing
and spitting on its idol,--it was a duty to turn aside the head. In
1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air, when France was seized
with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly
discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army
and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it,
and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of
the Bishop of D----, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the
august and touching features presented by the embrace of a great nation
and a great man on the brink of the abyss.

With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable,
intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only
another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It must
be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have just
reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with severity,
he was tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking
here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there by the Emperor.
He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a member of the
Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle.
This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks, which the
law then stigm