“Charles X., however, returned tenfold in hatred and suspicion all the pity and contempt which the wily diplomate sought to cast upon his government; and moreover, the devout monarch never could forget that the Bishop of Autun had renounced the Church, and had married, in spite of the threatened excommunication and eternal damnation voted by Rome as the punishment of such a step; for, although Pope Pius VII. had absolved the bishop from his vows of priesthood, it was never without a thrill of horror that the king beheld on court days his grand chamberlain, who seldom failed on occasions of ceremony and etiquette to present himself before his royal master, in spite of the cold reception he met with in the court circles, where his tottering gait and sarcastic speech had earned for him the sobriquet of ‘_Le Diable Boiteux_.’ The king, blinded by prejudice, even forgot, in this instance, the papal authority; for the marriage of the prince had been sanctioned by the Pope, and was therefore legal in the eyes of the most pious Catholics. “Nevertheless, at the epoch of the Martignac administration, it seemed as if a kind of _rapprochement_ had taken place, if not between M. de Talleyrand and the king, at least between the former and the ministry. The men who composed this ministry[A] all of them possessed a degree of moderation in their political opinions, which M. de Talleyrand could not but admire, and, wishing to prove that until then he had been opposed, not to the king’s government, but to the principles of the ministry who had conducted it, he sought by every means to show publicly his sympathy for the new ministers. He was seen once more to frequent the ministerial salons, and received the ministers at his own hotel with that _haute politesse_ and courtly urbanity for which he was so distinguished, expressing upon every occasion the satisfaction which he felt at seeing the helm of public affairs at last in the grasp of men whose experience rendered them able to comprehend the exigencies of the country, and possessed of resources enabling them to provide the most efficient means of meeting them. This satisfaction was but of short duration. In the month of August following, Charles X., yielding to the instigations of his secret counsellors, who worked upon his unenlightened conscience—taking, himself, undue alarm at the first check sustained by the _ministère_ Martignac in the Chamber of Deputies—replaced the members of his cabinet by the Polignac administration. Throughout the kingdom there arose a cry of indignation at this step. [A] M. de Martignac Interior. De la Ferronaye Affaires Etrangères. Feutrier Cultes. Portalis Justice.