ame Recamier:--

"I say it to you, my dear friend, I avow it without false modesty, I
never have had any merit or any honor in life, save from action in
common with my angelic friend. He alone is happy; he is so beyond
doubt; from heaven he sees our tears, our desolation, our homage; he
will be our protector on high as he was our friend, our support, upon
the earth."

The death of the virtuous Duke caused Charles X. great grief. He said:
"There are in me two persons, the king and the man, and I know not
which is the most affected."

M. de Chateaubriand desired--and the desire was quite natural--to
replace the Duke of Montmorency in the office of governor of the Duke
of Bordeaux, but the wish was not gratified. In his Life of Henry of
France, M. de PEne makes the following reflections on this point:--

"Chateaubriand lacked neither the knowledge nor the virtue to be the
Fenelon of a new Duke of Burgundy. The eclat of his literary renown,
the political sense of which he had given proof in the Spanish war, the
popularity that surrounded him, were certainly arguments in his favor.
But looking at things coolly, it was clear that an irregular genius was
not suited for the part of Mentor, when he still had all the wayward
impulses of Telemaque."

The choice of Charles X. fell on one of his oldest and most faithful
friends, the Lieutenant-General Duke Charles de Riviere. He was a
soldier of great valor, of gentle disposition, full of modesty and
kindness, believing devoutly and practising the Christian religion, a
descendant of those old knights who joined in one love, God, France,
and the King.

Born the 17th of December, 1763, M. de Riviere had been the companion
and servitor of the princes in exile and misfortune, and they had
confided to him the most difficult and dangerous missions. He was
secretly in France in 1794, and was arrested and condemned to death as
implicated in the Cadoudal case. At his trial, he was shown, at a
distance, the portrait of the Count d'Artois, and asked if he
recognized it. He asked to see it nearer, and then having it in his
hands, he said, looking at the president: "Do you suppose that even
from afar I did not recognize it? But I wished to see it nearer once
more before I die." And the martyr of royalty religiously kissed the
image of his dear prince.

Josephine intervened, and secured the commutation of the sentence, as
well as that of the Duke Armand de Polignac. Napoleon, who admired