Page 1413 - les-miserables

mestic than national was the doing of the King.
As will be seen, the proper deduction having been made,
the King’s charge is decreased.
This is his great fault; he was modest in the name of
France.
Whence arises this fault?
We will state it.
Louis Philippe was rather too much of a paternal king;
that incubation of a family with the object of founding a
dynasty is afraid of everything and does not like to be dis-
turbed; hence excessive timidity, which is displeasing to the
people, who have the 14th of July in their civil and Auster-
litz in their military tradition.
Moreover, if we deduct the public duties which require to
be fulfilled first of all, that deep tenderness of Louis Philippe
towards his family was deserved by the family. That domes-
tic group was worthy of admiration. Virtues there dwelt
side by side with talents. One of Louis Philippe’s daughters,
Marie d’Orleans, placed the name of her race among artists,
as Charles d’Orleans had placed it among poets. She made
of her soul a marble which she named Jeanne d’Arc. Two of
Louis Philippe’s daughters elicited from Metternich this eu-
logium: ‘They are young people such as are rarely seen, and
princes such as are never seen.’
This, without any dissimulation, and also without any
exaggeration, is the truth about Louis Philippe.
To be Prince Equality, to bear in his own person the con-
tradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution, to have
that disquieting side of the revolutionary which becomes

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