Part 12
The King, Monsieur, the Duke and Duchess of Berry, all showed equal confidence in Madame de Gontaut, and her nomination as Governess of the Children of France was received with general approval and sympathy. A woman of mind and heart, she performed her task with as much zeal as intelligence, and though strict with her two pupils, she made herself beloved by them. She especially applied herself to guard them against the snares of flattery. On this subject she relates a characteristic anecdote. One day a family that had been recommended to her asked the favor of seeing, if only for a moment, the Duke of Bordeaux and his sister. The two children, vexed at having to leave their play, were not communicative, and nevertheless received an avalanche of compliments. The visitors were in ecstasy over their gentleness, their beauty. They admired even their hair. These exaggerations embarrassed the children, who were full of frankness and directness, and displeased Madame de Gontaut. She quickly closed the interview. As the visitors were going out, a half-open door allowed the little Prince and Princess to overhear their observations. "It was not worth while to come so far to see so little," said an old lady, in an irritated tone. "Oh, as to that, no," said a big boy, "they hardly had two words of response for all the compliments that papa and mamma strained themselves to give them. You made me laugh, papa, when you said, 'What fine color, what pretty hair!' She's as pale as an egg and cropped like a boy."--"That's true," said the old lady, "she needs your medicines, doctor; and then they are very small for their age."--"Did you see the governess?" resumed the big boy. "She did not seem pleased when you complimented her on the docility of her pupils, and I could see that they were teasing each other." The Duke of Bordeaux and his sister, who heard all this, were petrified. "They are very wicked!" they cried. "They are simply flatterers," replied Madame de Gontaut. Little Mademoiselle resumed: "After having praised us without end, and telling us a hundred times that we were pretty,--for I heard it all perfectly,--to want to give me medicine because I was so homely and ill-looking! Oh, this is too much! I know now what flattery is,--to say just the contrary of the truth. But it's a sin. I shall always remember it!"
Madame de Gontaut succeeded beyond her hopes in the task confided to her. Morally and physically the little Prince and Princess were accomplished children.
The moment was approaching when the Duke of Bordeaux, born September 20, 1820, was about to begin his seventh year. That was the period fixed by the ancient code of the House of France for the young Prince to pass from the hands of women to those of men, who were thereafter to direct his education. On the 15th of October, 1826, the transfer was made of the Duke of Bordeaux to his governor, the Duke de Riviere, at the Chateau of Saint Cloud, in the Hall of the Throne, in the presence of all the members of the family, the first officers of the crown, etc. The child, brought by his governess before the King, was stripped of his clothing and examined by the physicians, who attested his perfect health. When he was clad again, the King called the new governor and said to him: "Duke de Riviere, I give you a great proof of my esteem and confidence in remitting to you the care of the child given us by Providence--the Child of France also. You will bring to these important functions, I am sure, a zeal and a prudence that will give you the right to my gratitude, to that of the family, and to that of France."
Charles X. then turned to Madame de Gontaut, whom he had just named Duchess in witness of his gratitude and satisfaction. "Duchess of Gontaut," he said, "I thank you for the care you have given to the education of this dear child." Then, pointing to Mademoiselle, "Continue and complete that of this child, who is just as dear to me, and you will acquire new claims on my gratitude." The little Princess then seized the hands of her governess with such effusion that the latter could hardly restrain her tears.
That evening the Duchess of Gontaut addressed to the Duke de Riviere a letter in which she depicted the character of the child she had brought up with such care:--
"I have always followed the impulses of my heart," she wrote, "in easily performing a task for which that was all that was needed. Monseigneur and Mademoiselle believe me blindly, for I have never deceived them, even in jest. A pleasantry that a child's mind cannot understand embarrasses him, destroys his ease and confidence, humiliates and even angers him, if he believes that he has been deceived. Monseigneur has more need than most children of this discretion. The directness and generosity of his character incline him to take everything seriously. When he thinks he sees that any one is being annoyed, the one oppressed straightway becomes the object of his lively interest; he will take up his defence warmly and will not spare his rebukes; he shows on these occasions an energy quite in contrast with the natural timidity of his character. With such a child, I have had to avoid even the shadow of injustice. He loves Mademoiselle, is gentle, kind, attentive to her. I have always carefully shunned for Their Royal Highnesses the little contests of childhood; however unimportant they may seem at first, they end by embittering the disposition."
We commend to mothers and teachers the letter of the Duchess of Gontaut. It is a veritable programme of education, conceived with high intelligence and great practical sense. What more just than this reflection: "The method of teaching by amusement is fashionable, and appears to me to lead to a very superficial education. That is not what I have sought. Let the teacher explain readily, but let him allow the pupil to take some pains, for he must learn early the difficulties of life and how to overcome them. A child prince, exposed to flattery, runs the risk of thinking himself a prodigy. To obviate this Monseigneur and Mademoiselle have often been subjected to little competitions with children of their age. I have sought by this means to give them the habit of witnessing success without envy, and to gain it without vanity." And what a fine and noble thing is this. "I have tried on all occasions to lead the mind of Monseigneur to the moral teaching of religion; I have used it as a restraint; I have presented it as a hope."
The Duchess of Gontaut was proud of her pupil:--
"It will require time," she says, in this same letter, "kindness, and tenderness to gain the confidence of Monseigneur. His features show his soul; he talks little of what he undergoes; he has much sensibility, but a power over himself remarkable at his age; I have seen him suffer without complaint. The efforts that he has made to overcome a timidity that I have tried hard to conquer, have been noteworthy. I have been able to make him understand the necessity, for a prince, of addressing strangers in a noble, gracious, and intelligible fashion. I have always sought to remove all means and all pretext for concealing his faults; bashfulness leads imperceptibly to dissimulation and falsehood. I am happy in affirming that Monseigneur is scrupulously truthful. I have believed it requisite, by reason of the vivacity of his disposition, and the high destiny awaiting him, to constrain him to reflect before
## acting. The word JUSTICE has a real charm for him; I have never seen a
heart more loyal."
The woman who wrote these lines so firm and honest, so sensible and forcible, was no ordinary woman. In contrast with so many emigres who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, she had learned much and retained it. The difficulties and bitternesses of exile were an excellent school for her. She remained French always,--in ideas, tastes, feelings. Sincerely royalist, but with no exaggeration, she took account perfectly of the requirements of modern society. Very devoted to her princes, she knew how to tell them the truth. She spoke frankly to Charles X., whom she had known from an early day, and had seen in such diverse situations.
It is to be regretted that the King did not consult her oftener. She would have saved him from many errors, notably from the fatal ordinances which she disapproved. She was a woman not merely of heart, but of head. Her Memoirs are the more interesting, that not the least literary pretension mingles with their sincerity. They have a character of intimacy that doubles their charm. This talk of a venerable grandmother with her grandchildren is not only solid and instructive, it is agreeable and gracious, tender and touching.
XIX
THE THREE GOVERNORS
In the space of three years, from 1826 to 1828, Charles X. named three governors for the Duke of Bordeaux. One, the Duke of Montmorency, never entered on his duties. The others were the Duke de Riviere and the Baron de Damas. The Duke of Montmorency was named in anticipation the 8th of January, 1826, although his task did not begin until the 29th of September. Mathieu de Montmorency, first Viscount and then Duke, was born in 1766. After having been through the war in America, he had adopted the ideas of Lafayette, and had been distinguished by his extreme liberalism. He took the oath of the Jeu de Paume, and was the first to give up the privileges derived from his birth on the celebrated night of the 4th of August. The 12th of July, 1791, he was one of the deputation that attended the solemn transfer of the ashes of Voltaire, and, August 27th, he sustained the proposition to decree the honors of the Pantheon to Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Petit Almanach des Grands Hommes de la Revolution, Rivarol wrote, not without irony:--
"The most youthful talent of the Assembly, he is still stammering his patriotism, but he already manages to make it understood, and the Republic sees in him all it wishes to see. It was necessary that Montmorency should appear popular for the Revolution to be complete, and a child alone could set this great example. The little Montmorency therefore devoted himself to the esteem of the moment, and combated aristocracy under the ferrule of the Abbe Sieyes."
Mathieu de Montmorency did not adhere to his revolutionary ideas. After the 10th of August, 1792, he withdrew to Switzerland, at Coppet, near his friend Madame de Stael. Under the Empire he held himself apart. He had become as conservative as he had been liberal, as religious as he had been Voltairian. Under the Restoration, he was one of the most convinced supporters of the throne and the altar. Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1821, he showed himself a distinguished diplomat, and during the session of 1822 made the Amende Honorable for what he called his former errors.
As he had always been sincere in his successive opinions, the Duke of Montmorency deserved general esteem. His profound piety, his unchanging gentleness, his exhaustless charity, made him a veritable saint. He was the complete type of the Christian nobleman. His name, his character, the very features of his countenance, were all in perfect harmony. The adversaries of the Revolution could not refrain from honoring this good man. On receiving the title of governor to the Duke of Bordeaux, he felt rewarded for the devotion and virtue of his whole life. But he regarded this grave employment as a heavy burden, "an immense and formidable honor, the terror of his feebleness, and the perpetual occupation of his conscience." This was the thought expressed in his reception discourse at the French Academy. The Count Daru replied to him. At the same session M. de Chateaubriand read a historic fragment. It was the first time since leaving the ministry that the celebrated writer had appeared in public, and he chose to do so to adorn the triumph of him whose rival he had been.
The Duke Mathieu de Montmorency died six months before he was to enter upon his functions as governor to the Duke of Bordeaux. It was Good Friday of the year 1826, at three o'clock in the afternoon. Before the tomb in the Church of Saint Thomas Aquinas, his parish, the Duke was praying like a saint, when suddenly he was seen to waver, and then to fall. Those near him ran to him, raised him; he was dead. The news had hardly spread when the church was filled with a crowd of poor people, who wept hot tears over the loss of their benefactor. On the morrow the Duchess of Broglie wrote to Madame REcamier, for whom the deceased had had an almost mystic tenderness:--
"Holy Saturday. Oh, my God! my God! dear friend, what an event! I think of you with anguish. All the past comes up before me. I thought I could see the grief of my poor mother, and I think of yours, my dear friend, which must be terrible. But what a beautiful death! Thus he would have chosen it--the place, the day, the hour! The hand of God, of that saviour God, whose sacrifice he was celebrating, is here!"
Father Macarthy said, in a sermon preached in the Chapel of the Tuileries:--
"Happy he, O God, who comes before Thy altar, on the day of Thy death, at the very hour when Thou didst expire for the salvation of the world, to breathe out his soul at Thy feet, and be laid in Thy tomb!"
Lastly, the Duke de Laval-Montmorency wrote to Madame Recamier:--
"I say it to you, my dear friend, I avow it without false modesty, I never have had any merit or any honor in life, save from action in common with my angelic friend. He alone is happy; he is so beyond doubt; from heaven he sees our tears, our desolation, our homage; he will be our protector on high as he was our friend, our support, upon the earth."
The death of the virtuous Duke caused Charles X. great grief. He said: "There are in me two persons, the king and the man, and I know not which is the most affected."
M. de Chateaubriand desired--and the desire was quite natural--to replace the Duke of Montmorency in the office of governor of the Duke of Bordeaux, but the wish was not gratified. In his Life of Henry of France, M. de PEne makes the following reflections on this point:--
"Chateaubriand lacked neither the knowledge nor the virtue to be the Fenelon of a new Duke of Burgundy. The eclat of his literary renown, the political sense of which he had given proof in the Spanish war, the popularity that surrounded him, were certainly arguments in his favor. But looking at things coolly, it was clear that an irregular genius was not suited for the part of Mentor, when he still had all the wayward impulses of Telemaque."
The choice of Charles X. fell on one of his oldest and most faithful friends, the Lieutenant-General Duke Charles de Riviere. He was a soldier of great valor, of gentle disposition, full of modesty and kindness, believing devoutly and practising the Christian religion, a descendant of those old knights who joined in one love, God, France, and the King.
Born the 17th of December, 1763, M. de Riviere had been the companion and servitor of the princes in exile and misfortune, and they had confided to him the most difficult and dangerous missions. He was secretly in France in 1794, and was arrested and condemned to death as implicated in the Cadoudal case. At his trial, he was shown, at a distance, the portrait of the Count d'Artois, and asked if he recognized it. He asked to see it nearer, and then having it in his hands, he said, looking at the president: "Do you suppose that even from afar I did not recognize it? But I wished to see it nearer once more before I die." And the martyr of royalty religiously kissed the image of his dear prince.
Josephine intervened, and secured the commutation of the sentence, as well as that of the Duke Armand de Polignac. Napoleon, who admired men of force, caused to be offered to M. de Riviere his complete pardon, and a regiment or a diplomatic post, at choice. The inflexible royalist preferred to be sent to the fort of Joux, where Toussaint Louverture had died, and remained a prisoner up to the time of the marriage of the Empress Marie Louise.
Under the Restoration, M. de Riviere, who was Marquis and was made Duke only in 1825, became lieutenant-general, Peer of France, ambassador at Constantinople, captain of the body-guards of Monsieur. At the time of his accession, Charles X. did for his faithful servitor what had never before been done; he created for him a fifth company of the King's body-guards. "My dear Riviere," he said, "I have done my best for you, but we shall both lose by it; you used to guard me all the time, now you can guard me but three months in the year." The 30th of May, 1825, the morrow of the coronation and the day of the reception of the Knights of the Holy Spirit, Charles X. conferred the title of duke on his devoted friend. "By the way, Riviere, I have made you a duke." It recalled the words of Henry IV. to Sully in like circumstances.
When he chose the Duke de Riviere as governor of the Duke of Bordeaux, the King said to Madame de Gontaut: "In naming Riviere, I have followed, I confess, the inclinations of my heart; I am under obligations to him; he has incessantly exposed himself for our cause; he has borne captivity, poverty; I love him, and I am used to him."
The new governor, who was very modest, was frightened at the task confided to him.
"You congratulate me," he wrote to a friend; "console me, rather, pity me. An employment so grave must be a heavy burden. I am easy about the instruction my royal pupil will receive; the wise prelate named by the King as his preceptor will be a powerful auxiliary for me. But my share is still too great. It requires something more than fidelity for such a place,--firmness without roughness, unlimited patience, address, intelligence. I am frightened at the mission I have to fill. I begged the King to release me. He insisted. I asked him to make it a command; he replied: 'I will not command you, but you will give me great pleasure.' I did not conceal from the King that I should have preferred to remain captain of his guards; he answered: 'Well, you made that place for yourself; make this for me.' How could one resist such language from the lips of such a prince? There was but one choice to make,--to do all that he wished."
Charles X. named as sub-governors two distinguished military men, the Colonel Marquis de Barbamcois and the Lieutenant-Colonel Count de Maupas. He named as preceptor Mgr. Tharin, Bishop of Strasbourg, and as sub-preceptor the Abbe Martin de Noirlieu and M. de Barande. The Bishop of Strasbourg was a pious and learned priest, of great benevolence and extreme affability. But his appointment exasperated the Opposition, because he had formerly taken up the defence of the Order of the Jesuits against the attacks of M. de Montlosier. All the liberal sheets cried aloud. Le Journal des Debates, furious that its candidate to the succession of the Duke de Montmorency, M. de Chateaubriand, had not been named, wrote, regarding the appointment of Mgr. Tharin:--
"Such imprudence amazes, such blindness is pitiable. It awakens profound grief to see this chariot rush toward the abyss with no power to restrain it."
The Duke de Riviere gave himself up entirely to the task confided to him. He never quitted the young prince. He slept in his room and watched over him night and day. In the month of February, 1828, he fell ill. The princes and princesses visited him frequently. The sovereign himself, putting aside for this faithful friend the etiquette which forbade him to visit any one out of his own family, went constantly to see him and remained long with him. The Duke had no greater consolation, after that of his religion, than the visit of his King. He said to his family as the hour of the expected visit approached, "Do not let me sleep," and if he felt himself getting drowsy, "For pity's sake," he said, "awaken me if the King comes; it is the best remedy for my pains." Charles X. could hardly restrain his tears; on leaving the room he gave way to his grief. The little Duke of Bordeaux, also, was much saddened.
One day, when he was told that the sick man had passed a bad night, he said to his sister: "Let's play plays that don't amuse us to-day."
Another day, when it was reported that his governor was a little better: "In that case," he cried, "general illumination," and he went in broad day, and lighted all the candles in the salon. The Duke de Riviere died the 21st of April, 1828; by order of the King, his son lived from that time with the Duke of Bordeaux, and received lessons from the preceptors of the young Prince.
The Liberals wished the successor of the Duke to be one of their choice. They maintained that the son of France belonged to the nation, and that it had too much interest in his education to permit the parents alone to dispose of it, as in ordinary families. The ministry wished to be consulted. Charles X. replied that he took counsel with his ministers in all that concerned the public administration, but that he should maintain his liberty as father of a family in the choice of masters for his grandson.
The King named the Lieutenant-General Baron de Damas (born in 1785, died in 1858). He was a brave soldier and a good Christian. M. de Lamartine said that he had "integrity, obstinate industry, virtue incorruptible by the air of couits, patriotic purpose, cool impartiality, but no presence and no brilliancy," and that "his piety was as loyal and disinterested as his heart." He had been Minister of War, and of Foreign Affairs, and distinguished himself under the Duke of Angouleme, during the Spanish Expedition. But under the Revolution and the Empire, he had served in the Russian army, and this did not render him popular. The Abbe Vedrenne, in his VIE DE Charles X., wrote:--