In the enthusiasm manifested by the people, he saw an
homage to the monarchical principle, not to the policy of one or
another ministry.
"You hear these people. Do they shout hurrah for the Charter? No,
they cry long live the King!" Still confident of the future, he
wished to persuade himself that the obstacles piled up before his
dynasty were but clouds that a favorable wind would scatter soon.
"Ah, Monsieur de Martignac," he cried, with deep joy, "what a
nation! what should we not do for it!"
At the moment that Charles X. traversed the provinces of the east
in triumph, the Duchess of Berry was making in the west a journey
not less brilliant than that of the sovereign.
XXIII
THE JOURNEY IN THE WEST
Never was a princely journey more triumphal than that of the
Duchess of Berry in the provinces of the west in 1828. Madame, who
left Paris June 16, returned there October 1, and there was not a
day in these three months that she was not the object of
enthusiastic ovations. In a book of nearly six hundred pages,
Viscount Walsh has described, with the fidelity of a Dangeau, this
journey in which the mother of the Duke of Bordeaux was treated
like a queen of a fairy tale.
The 16th of June, the Princess slept at Rambouillet, where two
years later such cruel trials were to come to her. The 18th, she
visited Chambord, where she was received by Count Adrien de
Calonne, the author of the project of the subscription, thanks to
which this historic chateau became the property of the Duke of
Bordeaux.
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