m and
confidence of the new monarch as of the sovereign who had just passed
from the Tuileries to St. Denis; Charles X., the Dauphin, and the
Dauphiness, all three looked upon him as the ablest and most valuable of
their devoted adherents. But M. de Villele soon discovered that he had
changed masters, and that little dependence could be placed on the mind
or heart of a king, even though sincere, when the surface and the
interior were not in unison. Men belong, much more than is generally
supposed, or than they believe themselves, to their real convictions.
Many comparisons, for the sake of contrast, have been drawn between
Louis XVIII. and Charles X.; the distinction between them was even
greater than has been stated. Louis XVIII. was a moderate of the old
system, and a liberal-minded inheritor of the eighteenth century;
Charles X. was a true emigrant and a submissive bigot. The wisdom of
Louis XVIII. was egotistic and sceptical, but serious and sincere; when
Charles X. acted like a sensible king, it was through propriety, from
timid and short-sighted complaisance, from being carried away, or from
the desire of pleasing,--not from conviction or natural choice. Through
all the different Cabinets of his reign, whether under the
Abbe de Montesquiou, M. de Talleyrand, the Duke de Richelieu,
M. Decazes, and M. de Villele, the government of Louis XVIII. was ever
consistent with itself; without false calculation or premeditated
deceit, Charles X. wavered from contradiction to contradiction, from
inconsistency to inconsistency, until the day when, given up to his own
will and belief, he committed the error which cost him his throne.

During three years, from the accession of Charles X. to his own fall,
M. de Villele not only made no stand against the inconsiderate
fickleness of the King, but even profited by it to strengthen himself
against his various enemies. Too clear-sighted to hope that Charles X.
would persevere in the voluntary course of premeditated and steady
moderation which Louis XVIII. had followed, he undertook to make him at
least pursue, when circumstances allowed, a line of policy sufficiently
temperate and popular to save him from the appearance of being
exclusively in the hands of the party to whom in fact his heart and
faith were devoted. Skilful in varying his advice according to the
necessities and chances of the moment, and aptly availing himself of the
inclination of Charles X. for sudden measures, whethe