Read The Short Reign of Pippin IV for Free Online

reverence for the king; then will servants and peasants be protected and sheltered, not turned out into a rapacious world; then will a man be properly known for his illustrious past rather than for his aggressive and greedy present; then will Gracious Majesty preside like a benevolent umpire over the refined and well-born. The king will tenderly direct and correct proper families and sternly reproach and punish any who attempt to force themselves in or to change the rules. Then will gentlemen be gallant to ladies and ladies lovely and gracious to gentlemen. Anyone who does not hold these things to be true has no place in the ranks of the noblesse.
    The Royalists were a clot in the bloodstream of the Republic. The Royalist party, while not numerous, rich, nor vocal, was close-knit and passionately devoted. Any difficulties among its members were social or had to do with ancient prestige and the maintenance of a permanently fragile honor.
    While the National Assembly debated the return of the monarchy with increasing fervor and approval, the Royalists met in a hall which had once housed the Czech Social Gymnastic and Oratory Club and had been abandoned after the Anschluss with the Soviet Union.
    No one could have foreseen any difficulty. The Bourbon Pretender was available, legitimate, and trained for his position. Fortunately, he had not been asked to the meeting. There were present:
    Vercingetorians
Merovingians
Carolingians
Capetians
Burgundians
Orleanists
Bourbons
Bonapartists
    And two very small groups—
    Angevins, who were rumored to have British support, and
    Caesarians, who claimed their descent from Julius and bore the bend sinister proudly.
    The Bourbons walked like emperors and smiled little Bourbon smiles when the king’s health was drunk. But when they named their Pretender, the Comte de Paris—all hell broke loose.
    Bonapartists leaped up, their eyes wild. Comte de Jour, whose great-grandfather had carried his marshal’s baton in his knapsack, cried “Bourbon! Why Bourbon? Has the sacred blood of Napoleon run out? And aligned with Orleans? Gentlemen, are we to live under the shadow of Bourbon and Orleans, the two lines which contributed most to the fall of the French monarchy? Are we—?”
    â€œNo,” screamed the Angevins, with what some thought was an English accent.
    â€œBetter the Merovingians, better the Rois Fainéants,” shrieked the Capetians.
    For a day and a night the battle raged while noble voices grew hoarse and noble hearts pounded. Of all the aristocratic partisans, only the Merovingians sat back, quiet, listless, content, and faint.
    It was mid-morning of the second day when exhaustion proclaimed to all the undeniable fact that the Royalists could no more settle on a king than the Republicans could form a government. In the night they had sent for a sheaf of swords and altered the Code by acclamation. Hardly a gentleman there was who did not wear scratches and cuts which proclaimed that his honor was intact. Only the lazy Merovingians were unruffled and unscarred.
    At 10:37 A.M., February 21, 19—, the elderly Childéric de Saône stood gradually up and spoke softly in his dusty Merovingian voice, which nevertheless was one of the few voices left.
    â€œMy noble friends,” he began, “as you know, I adhere to a dynasty which does not admit that you exist.”
    A Bourbon lunged tiredly toward the umbrella stand of swords, but Childéric stopped him with an upraised hand.
    â€œDesist, dear Marquis,” he said. “My kings, it is recorded, disappeared through lassitude. We Merovingians do not want the crown. Consequently, perhaps we are in a position to arbitrate—to advise.” He smiled wanly. “It appears to us that the Republican years have left their mark on this gathering. You, sirs, have conducted yourselves with all the foolishness of the elected representatives of an even less endowed populace but without their