Louis de Bonald : prophète du passe?

Life began for Louis de Bonald in the manner in which it was to be immortalized - aristocratic, feudal and, above all, Catholic. Born at Milau, France on October 2, 1754, the descendant of one of the old families of the Rouergue, Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald later took great pride in retracing his lineage to the time of the Reformation when one of his forebears, Etienne de Bonald (then a member of the Parlement of Toulouse), was largely responsible for the city's complete rejection of the new religious ideas. The title of Vicomte did not, as is sometimes erroneously supposed, originate with Louis himself; but was acquired in the seventeenth century by the family of Bonald when the estate of la Rode came into their possession. It was as the Vicomte de la Rode that Louis de Bonald took his seat in the 1789 Assembly of the Nobility of the Rouergue; moreover, the title appears in his nominations for the Academie francaise and the Chamber of Deputies - both of which predate his personal entry to the peerage under Louis XVIII.