IVING THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS.

1816

[Sidenote: Parliamentary rule in France]

[Sidenote: Revival of French letters]

An era of peace and reconstruction had begun. After a generation of war and
turmoil France was started on her new career of parliamentary government.
The brief period of retaliation ended with the so-called amnesty act of
January, which condemned Napoleon and all his relatives to perpetual exile.
The Chambers now entered into a prolonged discussion of the propositions
for a new election law. The Ministry was headed by the Duc de Richelieu,
who had taken the place of Talleyrand and Fouche. The latter was compelled
to leave France forever. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, who succeeded Davoust,
reorganized the army on a permanent footing of military equality which
satisfied even Napoleon's veterans. In the Chambers, the Comte d'Artois
represented the ultra-royalist right wing, while the left was brilliantly
led by Lafayette, Manuel, and Benjamin Constant. Guizot, during the same
year, for the first time ascended the tribune as spokesman of the moderate
party--the so-called Doctrinaires. Chateaubriand so offended the king by
his book "La Monarchie selon la Charte" that his name was crossed from the
list of the Council of State. Yet he remained the foremost man of letters
in France.

[Sidenote: Beranger]

Beranger was the foremost lyric poet. A typical song by him is that
rendered by Thackeray:

With pensive eyes the little room I view,
Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
And a light heart still breaking into song:
Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will--
There was my bed--full hard it was and small;
My table there--and I decipher still
Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

And see my little Lizette, first of all;
She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes;
Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
Across the narrow easement, curtain-wise;
Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
And when did woman look the worse in none?
I hav