hinking people compromised, the tranquillity
and prosperity of France lost; they were arming abroad, it was said, to
provide a remedy for these evils. The nobles hastened hither. Distaffs
were sent to all who refused to rally on the banks of the Rhine. How,
at twenty-five, could one resist this tide of opinion?" When he
perceived, in the foreign powers, the design of profiting by the
discords in France instead of putting an end to them, he laid aside his
arms, and never resumed them during the eight years of the Emigration.
"This resolve," he said, "was consistent with my principles. Always a
good Frenchman, I desired only the good of my country, the happiness of
my fellow-countrymen; my whole life, I hope, has been a proof of this
view. All my actions have tended to this end."

During his eight years of emigration, the Duke of Doudeauville was
constantly a prey to anxiety, grief, poverty, trials of every kind.
Thirteen of his relatives were put to death under the Terror. His wife
was imprisoned, and escaped the scaffold only through the 9th
Thermidor. He himself, having visited France clandestinely several
times, ran the greatest risks. In the midst of such sufferings his sole
support was the assistance of a devoted servant. "At the moment that I
write these lines," he says in his Memoirs, "I am about to lose my
domestic Raphael, the excellent man who, for fifty years, has given me
such proofs of fidelity, disinterestedness, and delicacy; I have
treated him as a friend; I shall grieve for him as for a brother."

Misfortune had fortified the character of the Duke of Doudeauville.
Unlike other emigres, he had learned much and forgotten nothing. His
attitude under the Consulate and the Empire was that of a true
patriot.--Without joining the Opposition, he wished no favor. The sole
function he accepted was that of councillor-general of the Department
of the Marne, where he could be useful to his fellow-citizens without
giving any one the right to accuse him of ambitious motives. Nothing
would have been easier for him than to be named to one of the high
posts in the court of Napoleon, whose defects he disapproved, but whose
great qualities he admired. "Bonaparte," he said in his Memoirs, "had
monarchical ideas and made much of the nobility, especially that which
he called historic. I must confess, whatever may be said, that the
latter under his reign was more esteemed, respected, feted, than it has
been since under Louis X