Having traced this woman's career from the very beginning, we know who and what she was; we have also some idea of what the Revolution was; consequently our first feeling is one of astonishment that these pious maxims and reminiscences of the Apocalypse written, with the same pen which wrote the Elegy to Sidonie, by the lady who a few years before was buying scarfs and hats _à la Valérie_, should have had power to stem the renewed impetus of the current of the Revolution for fifteen years. Not for fifteen years did inevitable evolution, the progress of science, the audacity of art, the rebellion of hearts, take shape in action which broke the charm.
The three monarchs "solemnly declare, in the name of the most holy and indivisible Trinity, that their intention in the present proclamation is to assert in face of the universe their irrevocable determination to be guided, both in the government of their own dominions and in their political relations with other governments, entirely by the rules of justice, love, and truth contained in the Christian religion. Far from being only applicable in private life, these prescriptions ought directly to influence the conduct of rulers, as indicating the only means of placing the institutions of society on a solid foundation and remedying their imperfections."
So much for the words of the compact. What was really sincere and benevolent intention on the part of the foolish imperial enthusiast was sagacious hypocrisy on that of his brother monarchs. Who does not know the rest? Who does not know what the Holy Alliance came to mean--the introduction of a general European reaction, in essence barbarism, in its outward form a lie? It was in the name of the Holy Alliance that, during the saddest decades of our century, even the very feeblest endeavours in the direction of intellectual and political liberty were checked or crushed.
The Alliance received the voluntary adhesion of the potentate who had most to gain from it, the Pope. Without any petty consideration of his own position as head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pius lauded to the skies the resolution of his compeers--Alexander, the Greek Pope; the King of Prussia, the Lutheran Pope; and the King of England, the Anglican Pope. At the Congress of Vienna he proposed a plan of restoration in comparison with which the dreams of all the reactionaries of other days paled and all previous attempts to restore pre-Revolutionary conditions sank into nothingness. With one stroke of the pen the existence of the Revolution and the Empire was blotted out. The Holy Roman Empire was to be restored, and along with it all the social conditions and institutions of the Middle Ages--tithes, church property, exemption of the clergy from taxation, and the Inquisition.