"
To one regarding the horizon attentively there were already some
dark spots on the bright azure of the heavens. The struggles of
the rival classes of French society existed in a latent state. The
white flag had not made the tricolor forgotten. Charles X.,
consecrated by an archbishop, did not efface the memory of
Napoleon crowned by a pope, and beneath royalist France were
pressing upward already Bonapartist France and Revolutionary
France.
XVII
THE JUBILEE OF 1826
The dominant quality of Charles X., his piety, was the one that
was to be most used against him. There was in this piety nothing
morose, hypocritical, fanatical, and not an idea of intolerance or
persecution mingled with it. Conviction and feeling united in the
heart of the King to inspire him with profound faith. In 1803,
before the death-bed of a beloved woman, he had sworn to renounce
earthly for divine love, and from that time he had kept his vow.
The woman by whom this conversion was made was the sister-in-law
of the Duchess of Polignac, Louise d'Esparbes, Viscountess of
Polastron. The Duchess of Gontaut recounts in her unpublished
Memoirs the touching and pathetic scene of the supreme adieu of
this charming woman and of Charles X., then Count d'Artois. It was
in England during the Emigration. The Viscountess of Polastron was
dying with consumption, and the approach of the end reawakened in
her all the piety of her childhood.
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