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For a long time public opinion had foreseen this choice, and dreaded it. At the commencement of the Restoration M. de Polignac for more than a year had refused to recognize the Charter and to swear fidelity to it, which made him regarded as the pronounced enemy of our institutions. Was this antipathy real? I do not think so.
The Queen first thought of it one day when she was riding out with the Duchesse de Polignac and the Comtesse Diane; she mentioned it to the King, who was much pleased with the thought, the purchase confirming him in the intention, which he had entertained for ten years, of quitting Versailles.
She was not by nature an intriguing woman, but was soon surrounded by a set of young men and women who made use of her favor and took advantage of her influence; the result was the formation of a regular Polignac set, almost all questionable persons, but an exclusive circle, permitting no division of favor, and undoing all who endeavored to rival them.
Though she understood the words, yet the smile on her lips vanished not away; and as the Countess Diana de Polignac wished to persuade her to allow the impertinent one who had spoken these words, to be sought out and punished, the queen, shrugging her shoulders answered: "My friend, I say as Madame de Maintenon: 'I am upon the stage, and must therefore be willing to be applauded or hissed."
The circumstances of the death of Maria Theresa, the Queen's mother, in the interval which divided the two accouchements, and Her Majesty's anguish, and refusal to see any but De Lamballe and De Polignac, are too well known to detain us longer from the notes of the Princess.
"'That may be, said the Prince, 'but while Her Majesty continues to honour with her royal presence the Duchesse de Polignac, whose friends, as well as herself, are all enthusiastically mad in favour of the constitutional system, she shows an undue partiality, by countenancing one branch of the party and not the other; particularly so, as the great and notorious leader of the opposition, which the Queen frowns upon, is the sister-in-law of this very Duchesse de Polignac, and the avowed favourite of the Comte d'Artois, by whom, and the councils of the Palais Royal, he is supposed to be totally governed in his political career.
On the day the Ordinances were signed, Polignac said to Circourt: 'From this day the King begins to reign, which he has not done before. These were the motives which precipitated the blow, and caused it to overwhelm its authors with ruin and confusion. April 8th. I was elected a corresponding member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, in France. 14th.
This declaration drew from Polignac the admission that he considered the reduction of the colonies by Spain as hopeless and that France "abjured in any case, any design of acting against the colonies by force of arms."
So it was, though with less violence, throughout the period known as the Restoration; and the Polignac movement of 1830, which led to the fall of the elder Bourbons, was a coup d'état, the object being the destruction of the Charter.
The latter, somewhat mortified at such a mistake, replied, "I lay that, with all other wrongs done to me, at the foot of the Cross." Ever since the Duchess espoused the party of her son against her brother and his nephews, the Duke has displayed a great fondness for his mother, about whom he never disturbed himself before. Mdlle. de Polignac made the Duke believe she was very fond of him.
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