The royalist sentiment was becoming constantly more feeble.  The 24th of January, 1828, some days after the formation of the Martignac ministry, the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld wrote, in a report to the King:—­

“In going to Saint-Denis, the 2lst of January (the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.), and seeing the lightness with which the court itself conducted itself there, it was impossible for me not to make many reflections on the futility of an age in which no memory is sacred.  And by what right can the people be asked to have a better memory when such an example is given to them?  No cortege, no coaches draped, none of the pomp that strikes the imagination and the eye.  Some isolated carriages, passing rapidly over the route, as if every one longed to be more promptly rid of whatever is grave and mournful in this day of cruel memory.”

The ultras were thinking much less of the real interests of the monarchy than of their own spites and their personal ambitions.

These pretended supports of the throne were digging the abyss in which the throne was to be swallowed up.  Charles X., blinded, was already thinking of calling the Prince de Polignac to power, and regarded the Martignac ministry as a provisional expedient.  To the despair of the members of this ministry, he maintained relations with M. de Villele, whose fall he regretted.  After the opening of the session, he wrote to his former minister, February 6, 1828:—­

“What do you think of my discourse?  I did my best; but as it was a success with some persons of doubtful opinions, I am afraid that it is not worth much.  Everything appears to me so confused, that I know not what to count upon.  The eulogies of the Debats and the Constitutionnel make me fear I have said stupid things.  Yet I hope not, and I shall continue to arrest with firmness what may lead to dangerous concessions.”

On the other hand, if there were among the liberals some sincere and well-intentioned men, who meant to remain faithful alike to the throne and the Charter, there were others who already masked treachery under the appearance of devotion to the King.  Those who two years later were to boast of having labored during the entire restoration for the ruin of the elder branch,—­actors in the comedy of fifteen years, as they called themselves,—­gave themselves out, in 1828, as partisans and enthusiastic admirers of Charles X. At the commencement of the session a deputy of the Left, having affected to say in the tribune that the King had not a single enemy, the Right permitted itself some exclamations of doubt.  One of its members, M. de Marinhac, cried:  “As a good prince I believe that His Majesty has no enemies, but as King, he has many, and I know them,” added he, looking at his opponents.  The entire Left was indignant, and caused the orator to be called to order.  M. Dupin thanked the president, and said in an agitated voice:  “It is a calumny, an insult, that we cannot endure.  Nothing wounds us more than to hear ourselves accused of being the enemies of him whom we adore, cherish, bless.”