Civrac (Jeanne d'Albret).

Among the pages were the Duke de Maille, who carried the banner of
France, and Count Maxence de Damas.

Eugene Lamy, at the age of eighty-seven, exhibited in 1887 a
charming water-color, of which the subject was "A Ball under Henry
III." He has the same talent, the same brightness, the same
freshness of coloring as when, fifty-eight years before, he
painted the water colors of the Mary Stuart ball. The Duke de
Nemours, one of the last survivors of the guests of this ball,
could recount its splendors. Even in the time of the old regime no
more elegant ball was ever seen. If such a fete had been given in
our time, the detailed accounts of it would fill the papers; but
under the Restoration the press was very sober in the matter of
"society news," and the dazzling ball of 1829 was hardly
mentioned. On the morrow, the Journal des Debats said:--

"PARIS, 2d of March.

"The ball given at the Pavilion Marsan, in the apartments of the
Children of France, was honored by the presence of the King, M.
the Dauphin and Madame the Dauphiness. Mgr. the Duke of Orleans
and his family arrived at eight o'clock.

"Tomorrow there will be a play at the Court Theatre; the actors of
the opera will play La Muette de Portici."

Beside the persons who figure in the album of M. Eugene Lamy many
others were to be noted. Let us mention the Countess Hemi de
Biron, the Marchionness Oudinot, the Countess de Noailles, who
represented Margaret of Savoy, Claude Duchess of Lorraine, the
Princess de Conde, the Princess of Ferrara; the Count A. de Damas,
as Lanoue Bras-de-Fer; Monsieur de San Giacomo, as Francois de'
Medici; the Countess de Montault, as Countess de Coligny; the
Marchioness de Montcalm, as the Duchess de Bouillon; the flower of
the English aristocracy,--Lady Aldborough, Lady Rendlesham, Lady
Cambermere, Lady Vernon, Lord Ramlagh, Captain Drummond, Lord
Forwich, Lord Abayne, Miss Caulfuld, Miss Thelusson, Miss Baring,
Miss Acton, and, lastly, the Counts de Cosse de Biron, and de
Brissac, representing the three marshals of France whose names
they bore.

In donning the costume of the unfortunate queen whose sorrows
could only be compared to those of Marie Antoinette, the Duchess
of Berry proved how free her mind was from all gloomy
presentiments, forgetting that the family of the Bourbons had
already had its Charles I., and not foreseeing that it was soon to
have its James II., the amiable Princess hardly suspected that in
the course of next year, she would be an exile in Scotland in the
castle of Mary Stuart.





XXV

THE FINE ARTS


From 1824 to the end of the Restoration, the department of the
Fine Arts, connected with the ministry of the King's household,
was confided to the Viscount Sosthenes de la Rochefoucauld, son of
the Duke de Doudeauville. He was then at the head of the museums,
the royal manufactures, the Conservatory and the five royal
theatres,--the Opera, the Francois, the Odeon, the Opera-Comique,
and the Italiens.

From the point of view of arts and letters the reign of Charles X.
was illustrious. The King encouraged, protected, pensioned the
greater number of the great writers and artists who honored
France. What is sometimes called in literature the generation of
1830 would be more exactly described as the generation of the
Restoration. This regime can claim the glory of Lamartine, as
poet. A body-guard of Louis XVIII., he was the singer of royalty.
He published, in 1820, the first volume of his Meditations
Poetiques, in 1823 the second, and in 1829 the Harmonies. His
literary success opened to him the doors of diplomacy. He was
successively attache of the Legation at Florence, Secretary of
Embassy at Naples and at London, Charge d'Affaires in Tuscany.
When the Revolution of 1830 broke out, he had just been named
Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece.

Victor Hugo published his Odes et Ballades from 1822 to 1828. "La
Vendee," "Les Vierges de Verdun," "Quiberon," "Louis XVII," "Le
Retablissement de la Statue de Henri IV.," "La Mort du due de
Berry," "La Naissance du duc de Bordeaux," "Les Funerailles de
Louis XVIII.," "Le Sacre de Charles X.," are true royalist songs.
Alexandre Dumas, FILS, in receiving M. Leconte de Lisle at the
French Academy, recalled "the light of that little lamp, seen
burning every night in the mansard of the Rue Dragon, at the
window of the boy poet, poor, solitary, indefatigable, enamoured
of the ideal, hungry for glory, of that little lamp, the silent
and friendly confidant of his first works and his first hopes so
miraculously realized." Who knows? without the support of the
government of the Restoration the light of that little lamp might
less easily have developed into the resplendent star that the
author of La Dame aux Camelias indicated in the firmament.

The author of Meditations Poetiques and the author of the Odes et
Ballades were sincere in the expression of their political and
religious enthusiasm. These two lyric apostles of the throne and
the altar, these two bards of the coronation, obeyed the double
inspiration of their imagination and their conscience. Party
spirit should not be too severe for a regime that suggested such
admirable verses to the two greatest French poets of the
nineteenth century--to Lamartine and to Victor Hugo.

Let us recall also that in Victor Hugo it was not only the
royalist poet that Charles X. protected, it was also the chief of
the romantic school; for the government, despite all the efforts
of the classicists, caused Hernani to be represented at the
Francais, a subsidized theatre. When the Academy pressed its
complaint to the very throne to prevent the acceptance of the
play, the King replied wittily that he claimed no right in the
matter beyond his place in the parterre. The first representation
of Hernani took place the 25th of February, 1830, and the author,
decorated, pensioned, encouraged by Charles X., did not lose the
royal favor, when, on the 9th of March following, he wrote in the
preface of his work: "Romanticism, so often ill-defined, is
nothing, taking it all in all--and this is its true definition, if
only its militant side be regarded--but liberalism in literature.
The principle of literary liberty, already understood by the
thinking and reading world, is not less completely adopted by that
immense crowd, eager for the pure emotions of art, that throngs
the theatres of Paris every night. That lofty and puissant voice
of the people, which is like that of God, writes that poetry
henceforth shall have the same matter as politics! Toleration and
liberty!"

The first representation of a work that was a great step forward
for the romantic school, Henri III et sa Cour, by Alexandre
Dumas, had already taken place at the Francais, February 11, 1829.
The 30th of March, 1830, the Odeon gave Christine de Suede, by the
same author.

In 1829, Alfred de Vigny had represented at the Francais his
translation in verse of Othello. It was from 1824 to 1826 that the
poet published his principal poems. It was in 1826 that his
romance of Cinq-Mars appeared. Victor Hugo published Les
Orientates in 1829; Alfred de Musset, Les Contes d'Espagne et
d'Italie in 1830. It may be said then that before the Revolution
of 1830, romanticism had reached its complete expansion.

Note, also, that the government of Charles X. always respected the
independence of writers and artists, and never asked for eulogies
in exchange for the pensions and encouragement it accorded them
with generous delicacy. It named Michelet Maitre de Conferences at
the Ecole Normale in 1826. It pensioned Casimir Delavigne, so well
known for his liberal opinions, and Augustin Thierry, a writer of
the Opposition, when that great historian, having lost his
eyesight, was without resources. It ordered of Horace Vernet the
portraits of the King, the Duke of Berry, and the Duke of
Angouleme, as well as a picture representing a "Review by Charles
X. at the Champ-de-Mars," and named the painter of the battles of
the Revolution and the Empire director of the School of Rome.

From the point of view of painting as well as of letters, the
Eestoration was a grand epoch. Official encouragement was not
wanting to the painters. Gros and Gerard received the title of
Baron. There may be seen to-day in one of the new halls of the
French School at the Louvre, the pretty picture by Heim, which
represents Charles X. distributing the prizes for the Exposition
of 1824, where Le Vaeu de Louis XIII. by Ingres had figured, and
where the talent of Paul Delaroche had been disclosed. In the
Salon Carre of the Louvre, the King, in the uniform of general-in-
chief of the National Guards, blue coat with plaits of silver,
with the cordon of the Saint Esprit, and in high boots, himself
hands the cross of the Legion of Honor to the decorated artists,
among whom is seen Heim, the author of the picture.

Ingres, chief of the Classic School, and Delacroix, chief of the
Romantic School, shone at the same time. In 1827, the first
submitted to general admiration l'Apotheose d'Homere and Le
Martyre de Saint Symphorien. The same year Delacroix, who had
already given in 1824 Le Massacre de Scio, in 1826 La Mort du Doge
Mariano Faliero, exhibited LE Christ au Jardin des Oliviers,
acquired for the Church of Saint Paul; Justinien,--for the Council
of State; and La Mort de Sardanapale.

When the Musee Charles X. (the Egyptian Museum) was opened at the
Louvre, the government ordered the frescoes and ceilings from
Gros, Gerard, Ingres, Schnetz, Abel de Pujol. M. Jules Mareschal
says:--

"The right-royal munificence of Charles X. was not marked by
niggardliness in the appreciation of works of art any more than in
the appreciation of the works of science and letters. But, as is
known, it is not by interest alone that the heart of the artist is
gained and his zeal stimulated. They are far more sensitive to the
esteem shown them, to the respect with which their art is
surrounded, and to the taste manifested in the judgment of their
productions. Now, who more than Louis XVIII. and Charles X.

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