"Accept,çoisRené monsieur, the homage of a sincere admiration, of a profound esteem and of the highest regard.
It was at the time of which I am speaking that I attained the highest pitch of my political importance. Through the Spanish War, I had swayed Europe; but a violent opposition was fighting against me in France. After my fall, I became, at home, the acknowledged ruler of public opinion. Those who had accused me of committing an irreparable fault in resuming my pen were obliged to recognise that I had formed for myself an empire mightier than the first. Young France had come over in its entirety to my side and has not left me since. In several of the industrial classes, the workmen were at my orders, and I could no longer take a step in the streets without being surrounded. Whence came this popularity? From the fact that I knew the real spirit of France. I had set out for the combat with one newspaper, and I had become the master of all the rest. My daring came to me from my indifference: as it would have been all one to me had I failed, I advanced towards success without troubling lest I fell on the way. All that remains to me is this satisfaction with myself; for what matters to anybody, to-day, a past popularity which has rightly been effaced from the memory of all?
The King's saint's-day[296] having arrived, I took occasion of it to blaze forth a loyalty which my Liberal opinions have never impaired. I published this article:
"Glory, honour, long happiness and long life to Charles X.! It is St. Charles's Day!
"It is we above all, the old companions in exile of our Monarch, who should be asked to tell the history of Charles X.
"You others, Frenchmen who have not been forced to leave your country, you who received one Frenchman the more only to escape imperial despotism and the foreign yoke, inhabitants of the great and good town who have seen only the happy Prince: when you crowded round him, on the 12th of April 1814; when, weeping with emotion, you touched consecrated hands; when, on a brow ennobled by age and misfortune, you found again all the graces of youth, as one sees beauty through a veil, you perceived only virtue triumphant, and you led the son of kings to the royal couch of his fathers.