No Minister of Foreign Affairs in France had in higher degree the
sentiment of the national dignity. Yet this is the way the Debats
expressed itself, the 16th of August, 1829, about a man who, the
next year, at the time of the glorious Algiers Expedition, was to
hold toward England language so proud and firm:--
"The manifesto of M. de Polignac comes to us from England. That is
very simple. We have a minister who scarcely knows how to speak
anything but English. It takes time to relearn one's native tongue
when one has forgotten it for many years. It appears even that one
never regains the accent in all its freedom and purity. In fact,
the English have not given us M. de Polignac; they have sold him
to us. That people understand commerce so well."
Despite all the violent criticisms, all the implacable hatreds by
which he was incessantly assailed, the Prince de Polignac was a
noble character, and no one should forget the justness of soul
with which, from the commencement to the end of his career, he
supported misfortune and captivity. The Viscount Sosthenes de La
Rochefoucauld, afterwards the Duke of Doudeauville, says, in his
Memoirs:--
"The purest honor, the loftiest disinterestedness, the sincerest
devotion, are not everything, there is needed a capacity for
affairs, a knowledge of men, which experience alone procures and
which even the strongest will cannot give.
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