I TRAMPLE HONOURS UNDER FOOT; YOU ARE MY ALL, REPLACING ALL ELSE

Continuing to vent his annoyance at being accused of seeking personal honors and dignities, Eugene expressed his reactions in his personal journal. Referring to his visit to Paris in 1817 he wrote about the possibility of restarting his friendship with the Duke de Berry, son of the future King Charles X of France. They had been in Palermo together when Eugene was 18 and the Duke was 22. It was a friendship that could have led to Eugene’s asking for favors if they met again.

Did I not prove this, when after the Restoration, having gone to Paris to represent the rights of my venerable uncle who had been completely forgotten, I did not want to just present myself before the Duke de Berry by whom I was particularly well known, with whom I had, for several months, constantly spent every evening in Palermo in a small committee of several other persons in the residence of the Princess de Vintimille where we took supper together and where he treated me with a sort of intimacy even to the point of concerning himself with my appearance, while wishing that I have my hair cut like his and while permitting me to join myself to his chevalier d’honneur and other great officers of his house, the Count de Sourdes, the Chevalier de Lajand, and to accompany him on the walks which he took in the environs of Palermo, finally giving me as a souvenir, when he departed, a fine-looking, small hunting dog.

Eugene de Mazenod’s Diary, 31 August 1847, EO XXI

REFLECTION

“People who use other people as stepping stones will one day lose their balance.”