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.
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