ty; let us bless a guardian
heredity, and may legitimacy without pangs give birth to a new King!
Let our soldiers cover with their flags the father of the Duke of
Angouleme. May watchful Europe, may the factions, if such there be
still, see in the accord of all Frenchmen, in the union of the people
and the army, the pledge of our strength and of the peace of the
world!" The author of the Genie du Christianisme thus closed his prose
dithyramb: "May God grant to Louis XVIII. the crown immortal of Saint
Louis! May God bless the mortal crown of Saint Louis on the head of
Charles X.!"
In this chant in honor of the King and of royalty, M. de Chateaubriand
did not forget the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, nor the Duchess of
Berry and the Duke of Bordeaux. "Let us salute," he said, "the Dauphin
and Dauphiness, names that bind the past to the future, calling up
touching and noble memories, indicating the own son and the successor
of the monarch, names under which we find the liberator of Spain and
the daughter of Louis XVI. The Child of Europe, the new Henry, thus
makes one step toward the throne of his ancestor, and his young mother
guides him to the throne that she might have ascended."
Happy in the ease with which the change in the reign had taken place,
and seeing the unanimous manifestations of devotion and enthusiasm by
which the throne was surrounded, the Duchess of Berry regarded the
future with entire confidence. Inclined by nature to optimism, the
young and amiable Princess believed herself specially protected by
Providence, and would have considered as a sort of impiety anything
else than absolute faith in the duration of the monarchy and in respect
for the rights of her son. Had any one of the court expressed the
slightest doubt as to the future destiny of the CHILD OF MIRACLE, he
would have been looked upon as an alarmist or a coward. The royalists
were simple enough to believe that, thanks to this child, the era of
revolutions was forever closed. They said to themselves that French
royalty, like British royalty, would have its Whigs and its Tories, but
that it was forever rid of Republicans and Imperialists. At the
accession of Charles X. the word Republican, become a synonym of
Jacobin, awoke only memories of the guillotine and the "Terror." A
moderate republic seemed but a chimera; only that of Robespierre and
Marat was thought of. The eagle was no longer mentioned; and as to the
eaglet, he was a prisoner at
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