It is mentioned by M. Champfleury as a thing unprecedented that this weather-cock device did not wholly lose its power to amuse the Parisians for two years. The portly person and ancient court of the king, Louis XVIII., called forth many caricatures at a later period. This king was as good-natured, as well-intentioned, as honorable a Bourbon as could have been found in either hemisphere. It was not he who enriched all languages by the gift of his family name. It was not his obstinate adherence to ancient folly which caused it to be said that the Bourbons had forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Born as long before his accession as 1755, he was an accomplished and popular prince of mature age during the American Revolution and the intellectual ferment which followed it in France. A respectable scholar (for a prince), well versed in literature (for a prince), a good judge of art (for a prince), of liberal politics (for a prince), and not so hopelessly ignorant of state affairs as kings and princes usually were, he watched the progress of the Revolution with some intelligence and, at first, with some sympathy. Both then and in 1815 he appears to have been intelligently willing to accept a constitution that should have left his family on the throne by right divine. Right divine was his religion, to which he sacrificed much, and, unquestionably, would have sacrificed his life. When he was living in exile upon the bounty of the Emperor of Russia, he said to his nephew, on the wedding-day of that young Bourbon: "If the crown of France were of roses, I would give it to you. It is of thorns; I keep it." And, indeed, a turn in politics expelled him soon after, in the middle of winter, from his abode, and made him again a dependent wanderer. In 1803, too, when there could be descried no ray of hope of the restoration of the old dynasty, and Napoleon, apparently lord of the world, offered him a principality in landed wealth if he would but formally renounce the throne, he replied in a manner which a believer in divine right might think sublime: "I do not confound M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded him. His valor, his military talents, I esteem; and I am even grateful to him for several measures of his administration, since good done to my people will ever be dear to my heart. But if he thinks to engage me to compromise my rights, he deceives himself. On the contrary, by the very offer he now makes me he would establish them if they could be thought of as doubtful. I do not know what are the designs of God with regard to my house and myself, but I know the obligations imposed upon me by the rank in which it was his pleasure to cause me to be born. A Christian, I shall fulfill those obligations even to my latest breath; a son of St. Louis, I shall know, taught by his example, how even in chains to respect myself; a successor of Francis I., I desire at least to be able to say, like him, 'All is lost but honor!'"