CHAPTER XX.

FRANCE IN VENICE.-HENRY V.

As I said, what we came to seek for in Venice was not Venice. It was France. We came to pay the homage of our respect to him who is the last hope of a stricken country.

There are Legitimists of two kinds: those who were born so, have always been so, and, never having examined the question under any other aspect, have often no other reason to offer for so being; and those, who, after a deliberate and dispassionate study of facts, and of all that has happened in France within the last sixty years, have acquired the firm and unalterable conviction, that unless in a return to the principle of Legitimate Monarchy, there is no possible salvation for the country. I belong to the latter class. It has not depended upon me to belong to the former.

As the mere incarnation of a principle, which principle alone can save the country I have learned to look upon as my own, I frankly avow that the individual merits or demerits of the future Monarch seem to me objects of comparative indifference. Royalty in England was not weakened because George IV. was not a pattern of morality, or his brother William IV. a miracle of genius. I therefore began by regarding the Comte de Chambord merely as the impersonation of Monarchy in France. To that impersonation it was, therefore, as to an abstraction, that we desired to tender our allegiance.

Had the honour of a nearer approach to the future Sovereign of France persuaded me that great personal superiority was not to be looked for in him, it would have had no discouraging influence upon my mind-for, I repeat it, he is the mere representative of a principle with which his individual merit can have nothing whatever to do-but in that case, I should have remained silent, nor ever sought by one word of unfounded eulogy to lead the opinion of any one astray. One may be an excellent and devoted subject without undertaking the part of a panegyrist.

Nothing can be of use which is not true. Therefore, in the case I allude to, should nothing have induced me to give a false idea of M. le Comte de Chambord.

Nothing which is true can be wholly without use. Therefore, the contrary of what I have supposed possible being the truth, and the moral and intellectual superiority of M. le Comte de Chambord being incontestible, it may not be entirely devoid of utility, that I, the most obscure among the many who recognize, should proclaim it.

Although, I repeat it, individual mediocrity could in no

way whatever weaken the salutary influence to be exercised over France by the accession of Henry V. to the throne, at the embodiment of a principle, still there is a peculiar kind of individual merit which may be calculated to reassure those, who in the Sovereign persist in seeing the man. I use the word "peculiar" because in my mind, there is a sort of superiority which, if M. le Comte de Chambord. possessed it, might be extremely prejudicial to his cause, and consequently to the country. If M. le Comte de Chambord were afflicted with that restless species of genius, the law of whose existence is constant action, (a quality indicative also in many instances of great superiority,) it would be an immense misfortune, for it would leave no issue open to him but to bear away his Crown at the sword's point-it would inevitably open before him the catalogue of chances. Now, to this, a principle cannot be submitted, and this the Comte de Chambord knows. His superioity is of a different kind, and of a very complex nature; various and often contradictory even as the circumstances in which he may be called upon to act.

The Comte de Chambord owes it to the majesty of the principle he represents, not to doubt for one instant of the eventual recognition of that principle, nor to compromise it by one act of impatience. He perfectly well knows and feels that he is a necessity for France. Tranquil expectancy of the hour, which cannot fail, must be his absolute law; to fit himself for the discharge of the solemn duties to which he will one day be called, must be his only care.

* The conviction that France must return to monarchy, is, however, based upon the supposition that France is to be saved, and to reassume her once high position among the European nations. France may be condemned to perish, and some day be little better

In both cases, this has been and is.

It is not always an easy thing to judge the character of a Prince. Opportunities sufficient have been afforded me for judging of M. le Comte de Chambord, and, however presumptuous it may seem, I have no hesitation in saying that history will confirm my opinion of him; upon this score I am wholly without fear, I know that I have judged him rightly.

The characters difficult to define are those wherein tortuous windings have to be followed-those whom to understand, you must decypher, to whose mysteries you must have a key.-Truth is written in very plain letters, to read it, the moral A. B. C. is enough.

Truth is the leading, ruling virtue of M. le Comte de Chambord. That once premised, never was a character made up of so many or of such extraordinary contrasts. Strong sense, sound judgment, and penetration, as profound as it is acute, these are the first attributes that strike you. Not only does the Prince bring these qualities to bear upon all the objects presented to his mental gaze by a mass of acquired instruction such as is very rare, but he has recourse to them to form his opinion upon his contemporaries, and I have been sometimes taken aback at the intimate knowledge betrayed by the Comte de Chambord in conversation, of even the slightest nuances of character of those whom it is necessary he should know, and whom he has never seen. And now, I hasten to observe it; this is a kind of knowledge which does not

than one vast Poland, or she may become extinct, and fade away into frivolity like some other exhausted nations. All this may be in the law of Providence. I merely say that, if France is to be saved, Henry V. is inevitable,

come merely from books, papers, or correspondence,none of those could give it. There is a degree of accuracy in judgment which comes far more from the innate rectitude of the individual judging, than from any positive means afforded to him for the formation of his judgment— this is what is so remarkable in the Comte de Chambord. You may live in Paris, know daily the workings of the miserably disordered political machine, be aware of what is passing in the mind of such and such a leader, of such and such a party, and yet, when you have the honour of discoursing upon these very men with M. le Comte de Chambord, you may learn, and while you recognize the undeniable justice of his observations, you wonder by what possible means he could have arrived at them,-for you see at once, that they spring from himself alone, and the knowledge he has of France is precisely that usually acquired only by what I would style the Revelation of

contact.

In the drawing-room of the Comte de Chambord, wherever it may be, in Vienna, Frohsdorf, or Venice, you are in France, and everything around you is so impregnated with this perfume of the absent home, that one evening, upon suddenly hearing beneath the windows of the Palazzo Cavalli the sound of a serenade sung by the Barcajuoli on the canal, I checked myself as I was about saying to a lady near me :-"What are they doing on the Boulevard ?"

The Prince has done what is required for certain physical experiments: he has created around him an artificial atmosphere; and that atmosphere is France. He talks to you not only of politics, but of the bruits du jour, and does so in the ever varying phraseology of the day,