Page:The Royal Family of France (Henry).djvu/22

. The late Queen Mercedes, His Majesty's first Royal Consort, was the youthful daughter of His Royal Highness.

6. His Royal Highness the Duke d'Alençon. H. R. H. the Duke d'Alençon has greatly distinguished himself as an Officer in the French Artillery.

Such is the brilliant Royal House of France, so called because it is the living personification of France, and because, having in the course of ages founded, with the nation's help, the unity of France, it now appears the last and only hope of Frenchmen, in the midst of their sorrows and their disasters. Let us bring it home to ourselves, although strangers only reading of the life of others; and may it go home to the mind of Frenchmen, that the safety of France is in the Monarchy, and that elsewhere people can find nought but ruin and calamity. But public dinners and bands of music, health-drinking and dancing should not be the end of the work of Monarchical Frenchmen. Rather may Frenchmen let these be the signal and the starting-point for a deeper union, a keener energy, a livelier hope, and even a firmer certainty of an early and rapid triumph. Surely of this triumph no Frenchman ought to doubt any longer, were Frenchmen to open their eyes to see that their best friends and true chiefs are an august legion of Princes, as noble-minded as high-born. In short, and the primary thing of all, an August Royal Family, headed by the lawful King of France.