Among other benefits to the town he gave money liberally to revive the manufacture of point d'Alencon; he renewed the trade in linens, and the town had a factory.Inscribing himself thus upon the interests and heart of the masses, by doing what the royalists did not do, du Bousquier did not really risk a farthing.Backed by his fortune, he could afford to wait results which enterprising persons who involve themselves are forced to abandon to luckier successors.
Du Bousquier now posed as a banker.This miniature Lafitte was a partner in all new enterprises, taking good security.He served himself while apparently serving the interests of the community.He was the prime mover of insurance companies, the protector of new enterprises for public conveyance; he suggested petitions for asking the administration for the necessary roads and bridges.Thus warned, the government considered this action an encroachment of its own authority.A struggle was begun injudiciously, for the good of the community compelled the authorities to yield in the end.Du Bousquier embittered the provincial nobility against the court nobility and the peerage; and finally he brought about the shocking adhesion of a strong party of constitutional royalists to the warfare sustained by the "Journal des Debats," and M.de Chateaubriand against the throne, --an ungrateful opposition based on ignoble 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 kindly inspired with love for his native place, is a despot in his own house, and utterly devoid of conjugal affection.This man, so profoundly astute, hypocritical, and sly; this Cromwell of the Val-Noble,--behaves in his home as he behaves to the aristocracy, whom he caresses in hopes to throttle them.Like his friend Bernadotte, he wears a velvet glove upon his iron hand.His wife has given him no children.Suzanne's remark and the chevalier's insinuations were therefore justified.But the liberal bourgeoisie, the constitutional-royalist-bourgeoisie, the country-squires, the magistracy, and the "church party" laid the blame on Madame du Bousquier."She was too old," they said; "Monsieur du Bousquier had married her too late.Besides, it was very lucky for the poor woman; it was dangerous at her age to bear children!" When Madame du Bousquier confided, weeping, her periodic despair to Mesdames du Coudrai and du Ronceret, those ladies would reply,--"But you are crazy, my dear; you don't know what you are wishing for;a child would be your death."
