On the 18th of February 1820,çoisRené the _Conservateur_[47] paid the tribute of its regrets to the memory of M. le Duc de Berry. The article concluded with this verse of Racine's:
Si du sang de nos rois quelque goutte échappée[48]!
Alas, that drop of blood now flows away on foreign soil!
M. Decazes fell. The censorship followed and, notwithstanding the assassination of the Duc de Berry, I voted against it. The _Conservateur_ refusing to be soiled by it, that paper came to an end with the following apostrophe to the Duc de Berry:
"O Christian Prince, worthy son of St. Louis, illustrious scion of so many kings, before descending into your last resting-place, receive our last homage! You loved, you read a work which the censorship is about to destroy. You sometimes told us that that work was saving the Throne: alas, we were not able to save your days! We are about to cease to write at the moment when you cease to exist: we shall have the sorrowful consolation of connecting the end of our labours with the end of your life[49]."
M. le Duc de Bordeaux saw the light on the 29th of September 1820. The new-born was called "the child of Europe[50]" and "the child of miracle[51]," while waiting to become the child of exile.
Some time before the Princess' confinement, three market-women of Bordeaux, in the name of all the ladies their companions, had a cradle made, and chose me to present them, their cradle and themselves, to Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Mesdames Dasté, Duranton and Aniche came to see me. I hastened to ask the gentlemen in attendance for a ceremonial audience. Suddenly, M. de Sèze thought that this honour was his by right: it was said that I should never succeed at Court. I was not yet reconciled with the Ministry, and I did not seem worthy of the office of introducer of my humble ambassadresses. I got out of this great negociation, as usual, by paying their expenses.
All this became an affair of State; the pother found its way into the papers. The Bordeaux ladies were aware of this, and wrote me the following letter on the subject:
"We owe you our thanks for the kindness which you have had to lay our joy and our respects at the feet of Madame la Duchesse de Berry: this time at least you will not have been prevented from being our interpreter. We heard with the greatest concern of the stir which M. le Comte de Sèze has made in the newspapers, and, if we have kept silence, it is because we feared to give you pain. Still, monsieur le vicomte, none is better able than yourself to do homage to truth and to undeceive M. de Sèze as to our real intentions in our choice of an introducer to Her Royal Highness. We make you the offer to state all that has passed in a newspaper of your own choosing; and, as no one has the right to choose a guide for us, and as we had been pleased to think until the last moment that you would be that guide, what we shall state in this respect will necessarily silence all tongues.