When these posthumous Memoirs appear,çoisRené will the daily polemics, the events of which men are enamoured at this present hour of my life, the adversaries against whom I am fighting, will even the act of banishment of Charles X. and his Family count for anything? There you have the drawback of all diaries: you find in them ardent discussions of subjects that have become indifferent; the reader sees pass, like shadows, a host of persons whose very names he does not remember: silent supernumeraries, who fill the back of the stage. Yet it is in these dryasdust portions of the chronicles that one gathers the observations and facts of the history of mankind and men.
I placed first at the commencement of the pamphlet the decree brought forward successively by Messieurs Baude and Briqueville. After examining the five courses that lay open after the Revolution of July, I said:
"The worst of the periods through which we have passed seems to be that in which we are, because anarchy reigns in men's reasons, morals and intellects. The existence of nations is longer than that of individuals: a paralytic man often remains stretched on his couch for many years before disappearing; an infirm nation lies long on its bed before expiring. What the new Royalty needed was buoyancy, youth, intrepidity, to turn its back upon the past, to march with France to meet the future.
"All this it neglects: it appeared before us reduced and debilitated by the doctors who were physicking it. It arrived piteous, empty-handed, having nothing to give, everything to receive, playing the poor thing, begging everybody's pardon, and yet snappish, declaiming against the Legitimacy and aping the Legitimacy, against republicanism and trembling before it. This abdominous 'system' beholds enemies only in two forms of opposition which it threatens. To support itself it has built itself a phalanx of re-enlisted veterans: if they bore as many stripes as they have taken oaths, their sleeves would be more motley than the livery of the Montmorencys.
"I doubt whether liberty will long be content with this stew-pot of a domestic monarchy. The Franks placed liberty in a camp; in their descendants it has retained the taste and love of its first cradle; like the old Royalty, it wants to be raised on the shield and its deputies are soldiers."