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The Poitevin gentleman had always been so noble and so honorable, that he was not once the object of those epigrams which the malicious journalism of the day hurled at the three hundred votes of the centre, at the Ministers, the cooks, the Directors-General, the princely Amphitryons, and the official supporters of the Villele Ministry.
On passing through Paris on his way to Vienna, Wellington found Villèle desirous of avoiding war, but counting on it as a probability. He arrived at Vienna too late for the actual conference, but in time to have some conversation with Metternich and the tsar before leaving for Verona.
If the right-hand party had held office for six years, and had used power so as to maintain it, if Charles X. had not only peaceably succeeded Louis XVIII., but had ruled without trouble, and even with some increase of popularity, it was to M. de Villèle, above all others, that they were indebted for these advantages.
He has saved my credit, he would go through fire and water for me, he has relieved me of my wife, he has brought me clients, he has procured for me almost all the business in the Villele loans I owe my life to him, he is the father of my children; I can never forget all this." In this case the compensations may be looked upon as complete; but unfortunately there are compensations of all kinds.
As long as he had M. de Châteaubriand for an ally, M. de Villèle had only encountered as adversaries, in the interior of his party, the ultra-royalists of the extreme right, M. de la Bourdonnaye, M. Delalot, and a few others, whom the old counter-revolutionary spirit, intractable passions, ambitious discontent, or habits of grumbling independence kept in a perpetual state of irritation against a power, moderate without ascendency, and clever without greatness.
M. de Villèle was mistaken in his answer: "May God grant," said he, "for my country and for Europe, that we may not persist in an intervention which I declare beforehand, with the fullest conviction, will compromise the safety of France herself."
They say the Turkish Empire cannot hold together. I do not like Lord Stuart's account of the state of the French Ministry. They will bring in Villele, who is an able man, and he may save them; but theirs is a desperate game. There would be a stipulation for amnesty, &c. December 3. The Chairs talked of Lord William Bentinck.
He had laid the foundations of his future importance in the following manner: The Villele ministry, accepted by the dying Louis XVIII., gave the signal for a change of tactics in the Opposition camp; for, since the death of Napoleon, the liberals had ceased to resort to the dangerous expedient of conspiracy.
During three years, from the accession of Charles X. to his own fall, M. de Villèle not only made no stand against the inconsiderate fickleness of the King, but even profited by it to strengthen himself against his various enemies.
"This man," exclaimed the king, "confirms me in the system of M. de Villèle, to temporize, and avoid the war if it be possible." Chateaubriand replied in an elaborate speech in favor of the war. From his standpoint, his speech was masterly and unanswerable. It was a grand consecutive argument, solid logic without sentimentalism.
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