A Start in Life [8]
(Serisy) of the estate from which the family take their title.
The father of the present count was president of a parliament before
the Revolution. He himself a councillor of State at the Grand Council
of 1787, when he was only twenty-two years of age, was even then
distinguished for his admirable memoranda on delicate diplomatic
matters. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, and spent that
period on his estate of Serizy near Arpajon, where the respect in
which his father was held protected him from all danger. After
spending several years in taking care of the old president, who died
in 1794, he was elected about that time to the Council of the Five
Hundred, and accepted those legislative functions to divert his mind
from his grief. After the 18th Brumaire, Monsieur de Serizy became,
like so many other of the old parliamentary families, an object of the
First Consul's blandishment. He was appointed to the Council of State,
and received one of the most disorganized departments of the
government to reconstruct. This scion of an old historical family
proved to be a very active wheel in the grand and magnificent
organization which we owe to Napoleon.
The councillor of State was soon called from his particular
administration to a ministry. Created count and senator by the
Emperor, he was made proconsul to two kingdoms in succession. In 1806,
when forty years of age, he married the sister of the ci-devant
Marquis de Ronquerolles, the widow at twenty of Gaubert, one of the
most illustrious of the Republican generals, who left her his whole
property. This marriage, a suitable one in point of rank, doubled the
already considerable fortune of the Comte de Serizy, who became
through his wife the brother-in-law of the ci-devant Marquis de
Rouvre, made count and chamberlain by the Emperor.
In 1814, weary with constant toil, the Comte de Serizy, whose
shattered health required rest, resigned all his posts, left the
department at the head of which the Emperor had placed him, and came
to Paris, where Napoleon was compelled by the evidence of his eyes to
admit that the count's illness was a valid excuse, though at first
that UNFATIGUABLE master, who gave no heed to the fatigue of others,
was disposed to consider Monsieur de Serizy's action as a defection.
Though the senator was never in disgrace, he was supposed to have
reason to complain of Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons
returned, Louis XVIII., whom Monsieur de Serizy held to be his
legitimate sovereign, treated the senator, now a peer of France, with
the utmost confidence, placed him in charge of his private affairs,
and appointed him one of his cabinet ministers. On the 20th of March,
Monsieur de Serizy did not go to Ghent. He informed Napoleon that he
remained faithful to the house of Bourbon; would not accept his
peerage during the Hundred Days, and passed that period on his estate
at Serizy.
After the second fall of the Emperor, he became once more a privy-
councillor, was appointed vice-president of the Council of State, and
liquidator, on behalf of France, of claims and indemnities demanded by
foreign powers. Without personal assumption, without ambition even, he
possessed great influence in public affairs. Nothing of importance was
done without consulting him; but he never went to court, and was
seldom seen in his own salons. This noble life, devoting itself from
its very beginning to work, had ended by becoming a life of incessant
toil. The count rose at all seasons by four o'clock in the morning,
and worked till mid-day, attended to his functions as peer of France
and vice-president of the Council of State in the afternoons, and went
to bed at nine o'clock. In recognition of such labor, the King had
made him a knight of his various Orders. Monsieur de Serizy had long
worn the grand cross of the Legion of honor; he also had the orders of
the Golden Fleece, of Saint-Andrew