Those vessels,çoisRené which carried liberty to the seas of Numidia, were carrying away the Legitimacy; that fleet under the White Flag was the Monarchy getting under way, sailing from the ports where St. Louis embarked when Death called him to Carthage. O slaves delivered from imprisonment, they who have restored you to your native land have lost their country; they who have saved you from eternal banishment are banished. The master of that huge fleet has crossed the sea on a bark as a fugitive, and France can say to him what Cornelia said to Pompey:
"It is indeed the work of my fortune, not of thine, that I see thee now reduced to one small ship where thou hadst wished to go before the breeze with five hundred sail."
Had I not friends among that crowd which, on the beach of Toulon, followed with its eyes the fleet setting sail for Africa? Did not M. du Plessix, my brother-in-law's brother, receive on board his ship a charming woman, Madame Lenormant, who was awaiting the return of the friend[182] of Champollion[183]? What came of that flight executed in Africa, executed at a single swoop? Let us listen to M. de Penhoen[184], my fellow-Breton:
"Not two months had elapsed since we saw that same banner wave in front of those same shores over five hundred ships. Then, sixty thousand men were impatient to go to unfurl it on the battle-field in Africa. To-day, a few sick, a few wounded, painfully dragging themselves along the deck of our frigate, formed its only retinue.... At the moment when the guard took up arms, according to custom, to salute the flag as it was hoisted or lowered, all conversation ceased on deck. I uncovered with the same respect that I should have shown to the old King himself. I knelt within my heart before the majesty of great misfortunes, of which I was sadly contemplating the symbol[185]."
The session of 1830 opened on the 2nd of March. In the Speech from the Throne, the King was made to say:
"If culpable manœuvres should raise in the way of my Government obstacles which I cannot, or, rather, which I will not anticipate, I shall find the means of overcoming them[186]."
Charles X. uttered these words in the tone of a man who, habitually timid and gentle, happens to find himself in a passion and excites himself with the sound of his own voice: the more forcible the words were, the feebler appeared the resolutions behind it.
