"Bonaparte," he said in his Memoirs, "had monarchical
ideas and made much of the nobility, especially that which he
called historic. I must confess, whatever may be said, that the
latter under his reign was more esteemed, respected, feted, than
it has been since under Louis XVIII. or Charles X. The princes
feared to excite toward it and toward themselves the envy of the
bourgeois classes, who would have no supremacy but their own.
Napoleon, on the contrary, having frankly faced the difficulty,
created a nobility of his own. Those who belonged to it, or hoped
to, found it quite reasonable that they should be given as peers
the descendants of the first houses of France." The Duchess of
Doudeauville was a sister of the Countess of Montesquiou, who was
governess of the King of Rome, and whose husband had replaced the
Prince de Talleyrand as Grand Chamberlain of the Emperor. Very
intimate with the Count and Countess, the Duke of Doudeauville had
some trouble in avoiding the favors of Napoleon, who held him in
high esteem. He found a way to decline them without wounding the
susceptibilities of the powerful sovereign.
Under the Restoration, the Duke of Doudeauville distinguished
himself by an honest liberalism, loyal and intelligent, with
nothing revolutionary in it, and by an enlightened philanthropy
that won him the respect of all parties. When he was named as
director of the post-office in 1822, many people of his circle
blamed him for taking a place beneath him.
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