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M. de Villèle was not insensible to this public token of imperial favour bestowed on himself and his policy; and the King, Louis XVIII., showed that he was even more moved by it. "Pozzo and La Ferronays," said he to M. de Villèle, "have made me give you, through the Emperor Alexander, a slap on the cheek; but I shall be even with him, and mean to pay for it in coin of a better stamp.
I now change position and point of view. It was no longer as an actor within, but as a spectator without, that I watched the right-hand party, and am enabled to record my impressions, a spectator in opposition, who has acquired light, and learned to form a correct judgment, from time. In December 1821, M. de Villèle attained power by the natural highroad.
The ultra spirit especially characterizes the first phase of the Restoration. Nothing in history resembles that quarter of an hour which begins in 1814 and terminates about 1820, with the advent of M. de Villele, the practical man of the Right.
The next day the Martignac ministry entered on its duties, and the Duchess of Angoule'me said to Charles X.: "It is true, then, that you are letting Villele go? My father, you descend to-day the first step of the throne." Mde. Martignac, who succeeded M. de Villele in the Ministry of the Interior, was a man of merit, honest, liberal, and sincerely devoted to the King.
Even the King himself, when any fresh manifestation of public feeling reached him, exclaimed pettishly, on entering his closet, "Always Villèle! always against Villèle!" In truth, the injustice was shameful.
M. de Villele, on the inside, follows from window to window the march of the legion, and so traverses the salons to the apartments occupied by his old mother and her family, whom he wishes to reassure by his own calm. Opposite the ministry, a great crowd fills the Terrasse des Feuillants, without taking part in the manifestation. But the clamors of the National Guards increase.
Even declamation itself seems to be exhausted and futile. Surely M. de Villèle must be allowed the merit of being well acquainted with their helplessness; his success springs from that cause; but this I look upon as an instinctive knowledge: he represents without correctly estimating these people.
M. de Châteaubriand was not found at home, and his dismissal was only communicated to him at the Tuileries, in the apartments of Monsieur." Whoever may have been the author of the measure, the blame rests with M. de Villèle. If it was contrary to his desire, assuredly he had credit enough with the King to prevent it.
Everybody knows that the Villele ministry was overthrown by the elections of 1826. Vinet, the Liberal candidate at Provins, who had borrowed money of his notary to buy a domain which made him eligible for election, came very near defeating Monsieur Tiphaine, who saved his election by only two votes.
"I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been making his way, and is but making it still. He may yet be caught and crushed between two cars full of intrigues on the highroad to power. He has no house; he has not the favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like Villele, the protection of a compact majority.
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