“The interior of France, as regards commerce, agriculture, industry, wealth, offers a most striking spectacle.  Let Charles X., as King and father, rejoice in his work; but let him reflect that the lightest sleep would be followed by a terrible awakening.”

The 12th of January, 1826, when his father-in-law, the Duke Mathieu de Montmorency, had just been named governor to the Duke of Bordeaux, M. de La Rochefoucauld again wrote to the King:—­

“Shall I thank the King for the nomination of M. de Montmorency?  Six months ago, it would have been useful.  To-day, it is merely good.  But alas, how far is that interesting Prince from the crown! and what shocks and revolutions he must traverse first.  If ever—­ God watch over France; the Orleans are making frightful progress.”

The signs of the coming storm accumulated in the most alarming manner.  Read this other report of the Viscount de La Rochefoucauld (August 8, 1826):—­

“Indifference to religion, hatred of the priests, were the symptoms of the Revolution.  God grant that the same things do not bring the same results.  The unfortunate priests no longer dare to go through the streets; they are everywhere insulted.  Three days since, a well-dressed man, passing by the sentinel of the Luxembourg said to him, pointing to a priest:  ’Never mind; in a year you’ll see no more of all these wretches.’  The poor Cure of Clichy was in real danger, surrounded by two or three hundred madmen, who cried; ‘Down with the black-hats!’ Every day there is a scene of the same sort.”

The popularity of Charles X., so great at the beginning of his reign, was dwindling every day at Paris.  M. de La Rochefoucauld did not fear to declare it to him.

“By what inconceivable fatality is it,” he wrote, February 6, 1827, “that the king amid all the care he takes to ensure the happiness of his people, is losing from day to day in their love and affection?  At the play—­and it is there, to use an expression of Napoleon, that the pulse of public opinion is to be felt—­the most seditious and hostile allusions are eagerly caught up.  Saturday last, verses, of which the sense was that kings who have lost the love of their people encounter only silence and coldness, were greeted with triple applause and furiously encored.”

The report of May 12,1827, was like an alarm bell: 

“Circumstances are so grave that the calmest minds betray fear regarding them; there are now but one opinion and one feeling,—­ doubt and fear.  It is said openly, as eight years since:  This branch cannot keep the crown; it is impossible; who will succeed it?  How many things, great Heavens, done in eight years; how many things forgotten!”

Exposed to an outpouring of enmities and of incessant intrigues, taken between two fires,—­the extreme Right and the Left,—­M. de Villele no longer had the strength to govern.  His ministry was about to come to an end.  Later, in retracing in his journal this phase of his career, he wrote:—­