historian not to be accused of
partiality for the Restoration has written: "On entering the Tuileries,
Charles X. might well believe that the favor that greeted his reign
effaced the popularity of all the sovereigns who had gone before. Happy
in being King at last, moved by the acclamations that he met at every
step, the new monarch let his intoxicating joy expand in all his words.
His affability was remarked in his walks through Paris, and the grace
with which he received all petitioners who could approach him."
Everywhere that he appeared, at the Hotel-Dieu, at Sainte-Genvieve, at
the Madeleine, the crowd pressed around him and manifested the
sincerest enthusiasm. M. Villemain, in the opening discourse of his
lectures on eloquence at the Faculty of Letters, was wildly applauded
when he pronounced the following eulogium on the new sovereign: "A
monarch kindly and revered, he has the loyalty of the antique ways and
modern enlightenment. Religion is the seal of his word. He inherits
from Henry IV. those graces of the heart that are irresistible. He has
received from Louis XIV. an intelligent love of the arts, a nobility of
language, and that dignity that imposes respect while it seduces." All
the journals chanted his praises. Seeing that the Constitutionnel
itself, freed from censorship, rendered distinguished homage to
legitimacy, he came to believe that principle invincible. He was called
Charles the Loyal. At the Theatre-Francais, the line of Tartufe--

"Nous vivons sous un prince ennemi de la fraude"--

was greeted with a salvo of applause. The former adversaries of the
King reproached themselves with having misunderstood him. They
sincerely reproached themselves for their past criticisms, and adored
that which they had burned. M. de Vaulabelle himself wrote:--

"Few sovereigns have taken possession of the throne in circumstances
more favorable than those surrounding the accession of Charles X."

It seemed as if the great problem of the conciliation of order and
liberty had been definitely solved. The white flag, rejuvenated by the
Spanish war, had taken on all its former splendor. The best officers,
the best soldiers of the imperial guard, served the King in the royal
guard with a devotion proof against everything. Secret societies had
ceased their subterranean manoeuvres. No more disturbances, no more
plots. In the Chambers, the Opposition, reduced to an insignificant
minority, was discouraged or converted.