trying to be elected as a ministerial royalist (without ever being
able to conquer the aversion of the administration),--this rancorous
republican, mad with ambition, resolved to rival the royalism and
aristocracy of Alencon at the moment when they once more had the
upper hand. He strengthened himself with the Church by the deceitful
appearance of a well-feigned piety: he accompanied his wife to mass; he
gave money for the convents of the town; he assisted the congregation of
the Sacre-Coeur; he took sides with the clergy on all occasions when the
clergy came into collision with the town, the department, or the State.
Secretly supported by the liberals, protected by the Church, calling
himself a constitutional royalist, he kept beside the aristocracy of the
department in the one hope of ruining it,--and he did ruin it. Ever
on the watch for the faults and blunders of the nobility and
the government, he laid plans for his vengeance against the
"chateau-people," and especially against the d'Esgrignons, in whose
bosom he was one day to thrust a poisoned dagger.

Among other benefits to the town he gave money liberally to revive the
manufacture of point d'Alencon; he renewed the trade in linens, and the
town had a factory. Inscribing himself thus upon the interests and heart
of the masses, by doing what the royalists did not do, du Bousquier did
not really risk a farthing. Backed by his fortune, he could afford
to wait results which enterprising persons who involve themselves are
forced to abandon to luckier successors.

Du Bousquier now posed as a banker. This miniature Lafitte was a partner
in all new enterprises, taking good security. He served himself while
apparently serving the interests of the community. He was the prime
mover of insurance companies, the protector of new enterprises for
public conveyance; he suggested petitions for asking the administration
for the necessary roads and bridges. Thus warned, the government
considered this action an encroachment of its own authority. A struggle
was begun injudiciously, for the good of the community compelled the
authorities to yield in the end. Du Bousquier embittered the provincial
nobility against the court nobility and the peerage; and finally he
brought about the shocking adhesion of a strong party of constitutional
royalists to the warfare sustained by the "Journal des Debats," and M.
de Chateaubriand against the throne,--an ungrateful opposition based on
ignoble