The
King, Louis XVIII. and his advisers might in their turn, without
weakness, have taken into consideration this moral confusion, of which
Marshal Ney presented the most illustrious example. The greater his
offence against the King, with the more safety could they place clemency
by the side of justice, and display, over his condemned head, that
greatness of mind and heart which has also its full influence in
establishing power and commanding fidelity. The very violence of the
reaction in favour of royalty, the bitterness of party passions, their
thirst for punishment and vengeance, would have imparted to this act a
still greater brilliancy of credit and effect; for boldness and liberty
would have sprung from it as natural consequences. I heard at that
time a lady of fashion, usually rational and amiable, call
Mademoiselle de Lavalette "a little wretch," for aiding her mother in
the escape of her father. When such extravagancies of feeling and
language are indulged in the hearing of kings and their advisers, they
should be received as warnings to resist, and not to submit.
Marshal Ney, pardoned and banished after condemnation, by royal letters
deliberately promulgated, would have given to kingly power the aspect of
a rampart raising itself above all, whether friends or enemies, to stay
the tide of blood; it would have been, in fact, the reaction of 1815
subdued and extinguished, as well as that of the Hundred Days.

I do not pretend to have thought and said then, all that I say and think
at present. I was sorrowful and perplexed. The King's ministers were in
a similar predicament. They believed that they neither could nor ought
to recommend clemency. In this momentous contingency, power knew not how
to be great, sometimes the only method of becoming strong. Controlled
but not overthrown, and irritated while defeated, by these alternations
of concession and resistance, the Right-hand party, now become decidedly
the Opposition, sought, while complaining and hesitating, some channel
of escape from their position at once powerful and impotent,--some
breach through which they might give the assault to the Government,
enter the citadel, and establish themselves firmly there. A man of mind
and courage, ambitious, restless, clever, and discontented, as well on
his own account as for the sake of his party, ventured an attack
extremely daring in reality, but circumspect in form, and purely
theoretical in appearance. M. de Vitroll