Chapter 2 - Page 2

fortunes. Some of our number were ambitious,
and would hear to nothing but the probability, nay, the certainty, of our
being purchased, as soon as our arrival in Paris should be made known,
by the king, in person, and presented to the dauphine, then the first lady
in France. The virtues of the Duchesse d'Angouleme were properly
appreciated by some of us, while I discovered that others entertained
for her any feelings but those of veneration and respect. This diversity of
opinion, on a subject of which one would think none of us very well
qualified to be judges, was owing to a circumstance of such every-day
occurrence as almost to supersede the necessity of telling it, though the
narrative would be rendered more complete by an explanation.

{Dauphine = Crown Princess; Duchesse d'Angouleme = Marie Therese
Charlotte (1778-1851), the Dauphine, daughter of King Louis XVI and
wife of Louis Antoine of Artois, Duke of Angouleme, eldest son of King
Charles X--she lost her chance to become queen when her father-in-
law abdicated the French throne in 1830--Napoleon said of her that
she was "the only man in her family"}

It happened, while we lay in the bleaching grounds, that one half of the
piece extended into a part of the field that came under the management
of a legitimist, while the other invaded the dominions of a liberal. Neither
of these persons had any concern with us, we being under the special
superintendence of the head workman, but it was impossible, altogether
impossible, to escape the consequences of our locales. While the
legitimist read nothing but the Moniteur, the liberal read nothing but Le
Temps, a journal then recently established, in the supposed interests of
human freedom. Each of these individuals got a paper at a certain hour,
which he read with as much manner as he could command, and with
singular perseverance as related to the difficulties to be overcome, to a
clientele of bleachers, who reasoned as he reasoned, swore by his
oaths, and finally arrived at all his conclusions. The liberals had the best
of it as to numbers, and possibly as to wit, the Moniteur possessing all
the dullness of official dignity under all the dynasties and ministries that
have governed France since its establishment. My business, however, is
with the effect produced on the pocket-handkerchiefs, and not with that
produced on the laborers. The two extremes were regular cotes
gauches and cotes droits. In other words, all at the right end of the
piece became devoted Bourbonists, devoutly believing that princes,
who were daily mentioned with so much reverence and respect, could
be nothing else but perfect; while the opposite extreme were disposed
to think that nothing good could come of Nazareth. In this way,