his colleagues had no majority in the Chamber, and that henceforth he, Charles, could use his popularity with the country to summon his favourite to his side.
The Prince de Polignac was loyal and disinterested enough, but he suffered from a prodigious lack of intelligence ; he had, however, while Ambassador in London, won a great deal of sympathy, notably that of Wellington. It was partly at Polignac's suggestion that the pernicious Droit d'Ainesse had been proposed. Observing the considerable rôle played by the territorial aristocracy in England, he had innocently imagined that nothing would be easier than to have the same sort of thing in France. His naïveté was the more formidable by reason of the mysticism in which he was steeped. He believed himself to be inspired by Heaven in direct answer to prayer. No man in France was more unpopular than he. His very recent profession of attachment to the Charter could not undo the fact that, in 1815, he had refused to support it. Moreover, as everybody was aware of the affection which Charles X. felt for him, the Press had long ago prophesied the formation of a Polignac
