How often have Juste and I exchanged glances when reading the
papers as we studied political events, or the debates in the Chamber,
and discussed the proceedings of a Court whose wilful ignorance could
find no parallel but in the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity
of the men forming the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all
alike devoid of talent or breadth of view, of distinction or learning,
of influence or dignity!
Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X. than the
present Court, if Court it may be called? What a hatred of the country
may be seen in the naturalization of vulgar foreigners, devoid of
talent, who are enthroned in the Chamber of Peers! What a perversion
of justice! What an insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions
native to the soil of France! We looked upon these things as upon a
spectacle, and groaned over them, without taking upon ourselves to
act.
Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any one, was, at
five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with a wonderful aptitude
for apprehending the correlation between remote history and the facts
of the present and of the future.
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