interests, which was one cause of the triumph of the bourgeoisie
and journalism in 1830.

Thus du Bousquier, in common with the class he represented, had the
satisfaction of beholding the funeral of royalty. The old republican,
smothered with masses, who for fifteen years had played that comedy to
satisfy his vendetta, himself threw down with his own hand the white
flag of the mayoralty to the applause of the multitude. No man in
France cast upon the new throne raised in August, 1830, a glance of more
intoxicated, joyous vengeance. The accession of the Younger Branch was
the triumph of the Revolution. To him the victory of the tricolor meant
the resurrection of Montagne, which this time should surely bring
the nobility down to the dust by means more certain than that of the
guillotine, because less violent. The peerage without heredity; the
National Guard, which puts on the same camp-bed the corner grocer
and the marquis; the abolition of the entails demanded by a bourgeois
lawyer; the Catholic Church deprived of its supremacy; and all the other
legislative inventions of August, 1830,--were to du Bousquier the wisest
possible application of the principles of 1793.

Since 1830 this man has been a receiver-general. He relied for his
advancement on his relations with the Duc d'Orleans, father of
Louis Philippe, and with Monsieur de Folmon, formerly steward to the
Duchess-dowager of Orleans. He receives about eighty thousand francs a
year. In the eyes of the people about him Monsieur du Bousquier is a
man of means,--a respectable man, steady in his principles, upright,
and obliging. Alencon owes to him its connection with the industrial
movement by which Brittany may possibly some day be joined to what is
popularly called modern civilization. Alencon, which up to 1816 could
boast of only two private carriages, saw, without amazement, in the
course of ten years, coupes, landaus, tilburies, and cabriolets rolling
through her streets. The burghers and the land-owners, alarmed at first
lest the price of everything should increase, recognized later that
this increase in the style of living had a contrary effect upon their
revenues. The prophetic remark of du Ronceret, "Du Bousquier is a very
strong man," was adopted by the whole country-side.

But, unhappily for the wife, that saying has a double meaning. The
husband does not in any way resemble the public politician. This great
citizen, so liberal to the world about him, so