"As it is writ in blame," says an old historian, "that all the good Servian kings could easily go into a ring, the bad kings of France could do so more easily, so small is their number." Under the Royal Family, the darkness of the Barbarians was dispelled, the language was formed; literature and arts produced their master-pieces; our towns were beautified, our monuments raised, our roads opened, our harbours constructed; our armies astonished Europe and Asia and our fleets covered the two oceans. Our pride waxes furious at the mere display of those magnificent tapestries in the Louvre; shadows, shadowy embroideries shock us. Unknown this morning, still more unknown this evening, we are none the less persuaded that we efface all that went before us. And yet each fleeting moment asks us, "Who art thou?" and we know not what to reply. Charles X. replied: he went away with a whole era of the world; the dust of a thousand generations is mingled with his; history salutes him, the centuries kneel before his tomb; all have known his House; it has never failed them: it is they who have been wanting towards that House. [Sidenote: The last of the Bourbons.] O banished King, men have been able to outlaw you, but you shall not be driven out by time: you are sleeping your hard sleep in a monastery, on the last plank but yesterday destined for some Franciscan. No heralds-at-arms at your obsequies: none save a troop of bleached and hoary old times; no grandees to fling the emblems of their dignities into the vault: they have done homage for them elsewhere. Mute ages are seated beside your bier; a long procession of past days, with closed eyes, silently mourns around your coffin. By your side lie your heart and your intestines, snatched from your breast and your loins, even as we lay beside a dead mother the abortive fruit that has cost her her life. At each anniversary, O Most Christian Monarch, O cenobite after death, some brother will recite to you the prayers of the memorial service; you will attract to your eternal _Hic Jacet_ none save your sons banished with you: for even at Trieste the monument of Mesdames is empty; their sacred relics have returned to their country and you have paid to exile, by your own exile, the debt of those noble ladies. Ah, why do they not to-day bring together so many dispersed remains, even as they collect antiques unearthed from different excavations? The Arc de Triomphe would carry Napoleon's sarcophagus as its crowning, or the bronze column raise motionless victories over immortal remains. And yet the stone carved by order of Sesostris hence-forward buries the scaffold of Louis XVI. under the weight of the ages. The hour will come when the obelisk of the desert shall find again, on the place of the murders, the silence and solitude of Luxor. [283] This book was written in Paris, in 1837 and 1838, and revised in June 1847--T.