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Updated: July 21, 2025
M. Villemain, in the opening discourse of his lectures on eloquence at the Faculty of Letters, was wildly applauded when he pronounced the following eulogium on the new sovereign: "A monarch kindly and revered, he has the loyalty of the antique ways and modern enlightenment. Religion is the seal of his word. He inherits from Henry IV. those graces of the heart that are irresistible.
This welcome news was shortly after confirmed by the Minister of Instruction himself. "I am happy," said M. Villemain, "to bear witness to the merit of your writings, and the originality of your poetry, as well as to the loyalty of your sentiments." The minister was not, however, satisfied with conferring this favour.
The King rose, paced to and fro for a few moments, as though violently agitated, then came and sat beside me and said: "Look here, you made a remark to Villemain that he repeated to me.
They reminded the public of the royalist laws of 1820. They were opposed by the more liberal men: Royer-Collard and Villemain spoke against them. They went by the name of the "Fieschi laws."
Jasmin had once before appeared at M. Thierry's before the best men of the Academy; and now the whole of the Academy, notwithstanding his patois, approached and honoured the man of good deeds. Jasmin owed to M. Villemain one of the most brilliant panegyrics which he had ever received.
French and German works predominated, the old French dramatists, sundry modern authors, Thiers, Villemain, Paul de Kock, George Sand, Eugene Sue; in German Goethe, Schiller, Zschokke, Jean Paul Richter; in English there were works on Political Economy. I examined no further, for Mr. Hunsden himself recalled my attention.
Here Sainte-Beuve discoursed with those whom he was afterward to criticise; here Talleyrand uttered his concise and emphatic sentences; here Lafayette won hearts by his courteous manners and amiable disposition; here Guizot prepared himself for the tribune and the Press; here Villemain, with proud indifference, broached his careless scepticism; here Montlosier blended aristocratical paradoxes with democratic theories.
We should, no doubt, be more courtly and polite, and perhaps say handsome things to each other. It was said of Villemain that when he spoke to a lady he seemed to be presenting her a bouquet. Allow me to present you this postscript in the same polite manner, to make good my theory of the rose in the buttonhole." How delightful it is to catch the intoxication of the little festival in this way.
He lived in grand style, and his palace, with its courts and gardens, was the resort of the most distinguished men in France, the Duke of Choiseul, Dupin, Béranger, Casimir Périer, Montalivet, the two Aragos, Guizot, Odillon Barrot, Villemain, politicians, artists, and men of letters. His ministry, however, lasted less than a year.
M. Villemain says in his Life of M. de Narbonne: "The Empress Marie Louise, generally so yielding to her husband, on this occasion manifested great opposition.
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