isk of displeasing their master and losing his good graces, did
not recoil from the sad obligation of telling him the whole truth. From
the beginning of his reign, Charles X. heard useful warnings, and later
he blamed himself for not having listened better to them. This justice,
however, must be done him, that if he had not the wisdom to profit by
such counsels, he never was offended at the men of heart who dared to
give them to him.

In this number was the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld, son of
the Duke of Doudeauville, son-in-law of Mathieu de Montmorency, charged
with the department of the fine arts, at the ministry of the King's
household. In publishing the reports addressed by him to Charles X.
from his accession to the Revolution of 1830, he writes:--

"These are respectful and tender warnings of which too little account
was taken, and which might have saved the King and France. I put them
down here with the gloomy predictions contained in them, which have
been only too completely realized. They are not prophecies after the
event. We saw in advance the misfortunes of the King, the fall of the
monarchy, the ruin of legitimacy. Each page, then each line, and soon
every word of this part of my Memoirs will be a cry of alarm: 'God save
the King!' Alas! He has not saved him. One is always wrong if one
cannot get a hearing and make one's self believed. It is then, with no
pride in my previsions, but with bitter regret, that I could not get
them accepted, that I recall this long monologue addressed to Charles
X."

From the beginning of the reign, as he foresaw that one day the Chamber
would sign the Address of the 221, and that M. Laffitte would be the
banker of the revolution of July, the Viscount wrote to the sovereign
in December, 1824:--

"The King has two things to combat for the glory and strength of his
rule, the encroachments of the Chamber of Deputies, and the power of
money in Europe. Four bankers could to-day decide war, if such was
their pleasure. Sovereigns cannot seek too earnestly to free themselves
from the sceptre which is rising above their own. The triumph of
moneyed men will blight the character and the morals of France."

M. de La Rochefoucauld added (report of January 31, 1825) this
prediction, which shows to what length his frankness went in his loyal
explanations with his King:--

"We are between two rocks, equally dangerous: revolution with the Duke
of Orleans, and ultraism with th