" King Louis
Philippe said one day to Marshal Gerard: "Had they listened to the
Duke of Doudeauville, and not broken up the National Guard of
Paris, the revolution would not have taken place."
The great lord, good citizen, and good Christian, who, at periods
most disturbed by changes of regime, had always been as firm in
the application of his principles as he was moderate in his
actions and gentle in his method, made himself as much respected
under Louis Philippe as under the Restoration. During the cholera,
he set the example of absolute devotion and was constantly in the
hospitals. He continued to sit in the Chamber of Peers until the
close of the trial of the Ministers, in the hope of saving the
servitors of Charles X. But when Louis Philippe quitted the Palais
Royal to install himself at the Tuileries, he resigned as Peer of
France. He no longer wished to reappear at the Chateau where he
had seen Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and in a letter to the Queen
Marie-Amelie, who had a real veneration for him, he wrote: "My
presence at the Tuileries would be out of place, and even the new
hosts of that palace would be astonished at it." The Duke of
Doudeauville, who died at a great age, in 1841, devoted his last
years to good works, to charity, to the benevolent establishments
of which he was the president. One day at the Hotel de Ville, he
drew applause from an assembly far from religious, by the words we
are about to cite, because they discovered in them his whole mind
and heart: "A husband would like a wife reserved, economical, a
good housekeeper, an excellent mother for his family, charming,
eager to please him--him only, adorning herself with virtue, the
one ornament that is never ruinous, having great gentleness for
him, great strength as against all others; he would wish, in fine,
a perfect wife.
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