e good Polignac. The by-word now is:
'These princes will end like the Stuarts.' Madame de--, who is
agitating against the laws now under discussion, has said: 'Yes, it's
the second throne of the Stuarts.' The Left compare the Archbishop of
Rheims to Father Peters, the restless and ambitious confessor of King
James. It is not easy for me to write thus to the King, and I have
assumed a hard task in promising myself to conceal nothing from him.
Sometimes my heart is oppressed and my hand stops; but I question my
conscience, which seems troubled, and the indispensable necessity of
telling all to the King, that he may judge in his wisdom, decides me to
go on."
How many sagacious warnings given by the brave courtier, or, better, by
the faithful friend, during the year 1825, the year of the coronation:
"The good Madame de M-- of the Sacred Heart was saying the other day:
'We had a King with no limbs, and with a head; now we have limbs and no
head.' It is unheard of, the trouble taken in certain circles to make
out that the King has no will. The future must give to all a complete
refutation; the future must teach them that the King knows how to
distinguish those that betray from those that serve him." (Report of
March 1, 1825). "Does the King wish to run the chances of a complete
overturning by throwing himself into the hands of the ultras? That
would be to fall again under the blows of the Revolution, which counts
on these to push the monarchy into the abyss always held open at its
side."
From 1825, criticism of the King began. He was accused of giving
himself up too much to the pleasures of the chase. The time was
approaching when his enemies would say of him--a cruel play on words:
"He's good for nothing but to hunt," and would translate the four
letters over the doors of houses M. A. C. L. (Maison Assuree Contre
l'Incendie) by this phrase: Mes Amis, Chassons-le.
The 17th of June, 1825, M. de La Rochefoucauld wrote:--
"I must tell all to the King. I have prevented the giving of a play at
the Odeon called Robin des Bois (Robin Hood), because it is a nickname
criminally given by the people to him whom they accuse of hunting too
often, an accusation very unjust in the eyes of those who know that
never did a prince work more than he to whom allusion is made. When the
King takes this distraction so necessary to him, why hasten to make it
known to the public? All news comes from the Chateau, and the
Constitutionnel and th
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