North Dakotan Monarchist

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Hilaire du Berrier explains how a boy from North Dakota became a monarchist:

When I was 9 years old I was given a book on Napoleon’s cavalry, and my mind was made up. One of the first things I did when I came to Paris was to join the French monarchist party.

I think that one of the most sublime speeches a head of state ever made was the reply that King Alphonso XIII gave to the men from Madrid who came to ask him to abdicate. His Majesty was in the Maurice Hotel in Paris, heard them through and when they were finished he stood up, addressed them and said: “You have asked me to abdicate. But abdicate I cannot. For I am not only the King of Spain, but I am the King of all the Spaniards. And I not only have my own reign, but those of my family who have gone before me, for which I must someday give a rigorous accounting.”

I was walking in the Rue de Rivioli one day, and there was a tall man approaching. I recognized him, and I tipped my hat. He tipped his hat. It was Alphonso. After that I would have followed him anywhere.
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Did you ever read [Oswald] Spengler? He put it this way: “Tradition is cosmic force at its highest energy.” And he said, “Modern man rejects everything he does not understand and destroys with an epigram institutions reared by the inarticulate wisdom of the centuries.”

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