A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6Guizot, François
History
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6
Guizot, François
France -- History
instructive, and happily and aptly directed, charmed the sensible
courtier and made the rest wonder. There was all at once an opening of
eyes, and ears, and hearts. There was a taste of the consolation, which
was so necessary and so longed for, of seeing one’s future master so well
fitted to be from his capacity and from the use that he showed he could
make of it.”
The king had ordered ministers to go and do their work at the prince’s.
The latter conversed modestly and discreetly with the men he thought
capable of enlightening him; the Duke of St. Simon had this honor, which
he owed to the friendship of the Duke of Beauvilliers, and of which he
showed himself sensible in his Memoires. Fenelon was still at Cambrai,
“which all at once turned out to be the only road from all the different
parts of Flanders. The archbishop had such and so eager a court there,
that for all his delight he was pained by it, from apprehension of the
noise it would make, and the bad effect he feared it might have on the
king’s mind.” He, however, kept writing to the dauphin, sending him
plans of government prepared long before; some wise, bold, liberal,
worthy of a mind that was broad and without prejudices; others chimerical
and impossible of application. The prince examined them with care.
“He had comprehended what it is to leave God for God’s sake, and had set
about applying himself almost entirely to things which might make him
acquainted with government, having a sort of foretaste already of
reigning, and being more and more the hope of the nation, which was at
last beginning to appreciate him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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