Towards 1820 the liberal opposition organized itself in the
Chambers and in the press. The Muse of Beranger came to its assistance
under the mask of gay raillery. He was the angry bee that stung flying,
and whose stings are not harmless; nay, he would fain have made them
mortal to the enemy. He hated even Louis XVIII., a king who was esteemed
tolerably wise, and more intelligent than his party. "I stick my pins,"
said Beranger, "into the calves of Louis XVIII." One must have seen
the fat king in small-clothes, his legs as big as posts and round as
pin-cushions, to appreciate all the point of the epigram.
Beranger had been very intimate since 1815 with the Deputy Manuel, a man
of sense and courage, but very hostile to the Bourbons, and who, for
words spoken from the Tribune, was expelled from the Chamber of Deputies
and declared incapable of reelection. Though intimate with many
influential members of the opposition, such as Laffitte the banker, and
General Sebastiani, it was only with Manuel that Beranger perfectly
agreed. It is by his side, in the same tomb, that he now reposes in Pere
la Chaise, and after the death of Manuel he always slept on the mattress
upon which his friend had breathed his last. Manuel and Beranger
were ultra-inimical to the Restoration.
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