"A son of St. Louis, the last scion of the Elder Branch, escapes the crosses of a long banishment and returns to his country; he begins to taste happiness; he indulges the hope of seeing himself revive, of at the same time seeing the monarchy revive in the children that God promises him: suddenly he is struck down in the midst of his hopes, almost in the arms of his wife. He is going to die, and he is not full of years! Might he not accuse Heaven, ask It why It treats him with such severity? Ah, how pardonable it would have been in him to complain of his destiny! For, after all, what harm did he do? He lived familiarly among us in perfect simplicity, mingled in our pleasures and assuaged our pains; already six of his relations have perished: why murder him also, why seek out him, innocent, him so far from the throne, twenty-seven years after the death of Louis XVI.? Let us learn to know better the heart of a Bourbon! That heart, all pierced by the dagger, was not able to find a single murmur against us: not one regret for life, not one bitter word was uttered by the Prince. A husband, son, father and brother, a prey to every anguish of the mind, to every suffering of the body, he does not cease to ask pardon for 'the man,' whom he does not even call his assassin! The most impetuous becomes suddenly the gentlest character. It is a man attached to existence by every tie of the heart, it is a prince in the flower of his youth, it is the heir to the fairest kingdom on earth that is dying: and you would think that it was a poor wretch who loses nothing here below." [Illustration: Duc de Berry.] The murderer Louvel was a little man with a dirty and sorry face, such as one sees by the thousand on the Paris streets. He had something of the cur; he had a snarling and solitary air. It is probable that Louvel was not a member of any society: he was one of a sect, not of a plot; he belonged to one of those conspiracies of ideas, the members of which may sometimes come together, but most frequently act one by one, according to their individual impulse. His brain fed on a single thought, even as a heart slakes its thirst on a single passion. His act was consequent upon his principles: he would have liked to kill the whole Dynasty at one blow. Louvel has his admirers even as Robespierre has his. Our material society, the accomplice of every material enterprise, soon destroyed the chapel raised in expiation of a crime. We abhor moral sentiment, because in it we behold the enemy and the accuser: tears would have appeared a recrimination; we were in a hurry to deprive a few Christians of a cross to weep at. On the 18th of February 1820, the _Conservateur_[47] paid the tribute of its regrets to the memory of M. le Duc de Berry. The article concluded with this verse of Racine's: Si du sang de nos rois quelque goutte échappée[48]!