Part 5
"'Father, if you will wager ten thousand francs, I will ride in an omnibus to-morrow.'
"'It's the last thing I should do, my dear,' replied His Majesty. 'You are quite crazy enough to do it.'"
M. de Mesnard adds this reflection: "What the King regarded as folly was only the appearance of it. There was in Madame a rich fund of reason, justice, and humanity. Independently of all the acts of beneficence daily done here, Madame employs still more considerable sums in the support of young girls in the convents of Lucon and Mantes, and in several other establishments. There are in the colleges a large number of young people of families of modest fortune, whose expenses she pays. The Hospital of Rosny alone costs Madame from twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand francs a year. The exhaustless bounty of this august Princess extends to all. There is no sort of aid that Her Royal Highness does not take pleasure in according: subscriptions without interest for her, for concerts that she will not hear, for benefit performances that she will not see, everything gets a subscription from her, and it all costs more than is convenient with the Princess's revenue. Sometimes it happens that her funds are exhausted, and as her benevolence never is, embarrassment follows."
Apropos of this the Count de Mesnard relates a touching anecdote. One winter exceedingly cold, the Duchess of Berry was about to give a fete in the Pavillon de Marsan. During the day she had supervised the preparations. Things were arranged perfectly, when all at once her face saddened. She was asked respectfully what had displeased her. "What icy weather!" she cried. "Poor people may be dying of cold and hunger to-night while we are taking our delights. That spoils my pleasure." Then she added emphatically: "Go call the Marquis de Sassenay" (her Treasurer).
The Marquis came promptly.
"Monsieur," said the good Princess, "you must write instantly to the twelve mayors of Paris, and in each letter put one thousand francs to be expended in wood, and distributed this very night to the poor families of each arrondissement. It is very little, but it may save some unfortunates."
The Treasurer responded: "Madame, I should be eager to obey the orders of Her Royal Highness, but she has nothing, or almost nothing, in her treasury."
A feeling of discontent was strongly depicted on the face of Madame, who was about to give expression to it, when M. de Mesnard hastened to say that the funds of the First Equerry were in better state than those of the Treasurer, and remitted to the latter the twelve thousand francs, which were distributed to the poor that evening according to the Princess's wishes.
The Duchess of Berry had the double gift of pleasing and making herself loved. All the persons of her household, all her servitors, from the great nobles and great ladies to the domestics and the chamber-maids, were deeply devoted to her. Poor or rich, she had attentions for all. Listen to the Count de Mesnard:--
"Madame is incessantly making presents to all who approach her. At New Year's her apartments are a veritable bazaar furnished from all the shops of Paris; her provision, made from every quarter, is universal, from bon-bons to the most precious articles--everything is there. Madame has thought of each specially; the people of her own service are not forgotten any more than the ladies and officers of her household; father, mother, children, every one, is included in the distribution. The royal family naturally comes first; next, the numerous relatives of the Palais Royal, of whom she is very fond; then her family at Naples, which is also numerous; and finally all of us, masters and servants, we all have our turn."
No one, we think, has made a more exact portrait of the Duchess of Berry than the Count Armand de Pontmartin, who is so familiar with the Restoration. In his truthful and lively Souvenirs d'un vieux critique, how well he presents "this flower of Ischia or of Castellamare, transplanted to the banks of the Seine, under the gray sky of Paris, to this Chateau des Tuileries, which the revolutions peopled with phantoms before making it a spectre."
How really she was "this good Duchess, so French and so Neapolitan at once, half Vesuvius, half school-girl, whom nothing must prevent us from honoring and loving." The chivalric and sentimental rhetoric of the time, the elegies of the poets, the noble prose of Chateaubriand, the tearful articles of the royalist journals, have condemned her to appear forever solemn and sublime. It was sought to confine her youth between a tomb and a cradle. But as M. de Pontmartin so finely remarks: "At the end of two or three years her true nature appears beneath this artificial drapery. Amusements recommence, distractions abound. The Princess is no longer a heroine; she is a sprite. The beach of Dieppe sings her praises better, a thousand times better, than the chorus of courtiers. She loves pleasure, but she wishes every pleasure to be a grace or a benefit. She creates a mine of gold under the sand of the Norman coast; she pacifies political rancor and soothes the wounds of the grumblers of the Grand Army. She makes popular the name of Bourbon, which had suffered from so much ingratitude. The Petit-Chateau, as her delightful household was called, renews the elegant manners, the exquisite gallantries of the court of Anne of Austria, and offers to the romancers the models of which Balzac, later, made so much too free use. There I see our amiable Duchess in her true element, not on the kind of Sinai on which the writers of the white flag have perched her, prodigal in their imitations of Bossuet,--between Jeanne d'Arc and Jeanne Hachette, between Valentine de Milan and the Widow of Malabar."
To sum up, the Duchess of Berry was to the court of Charles X. what the Duchess of Burgundy was to that of Louis XIV. Her lovely youth brightened everything. Let us do her this justice: despite a character in appearance frivolous, she carried to a kind of fanaticism the love of France and passion for French glory. There was one thing that the gracious widow took very seriously,--the rights of her son. She would have risked a thousand deaths to defend that child, who represented in her heart the cause of the fatherland. Where he was concerned there was in the attitude of this frail young woman something firm and decided. To a sagacious observer, the amazon was already manifest under the lady of society. She was like those officers who shine equally at the ball and on the field of battle. Recognizing in her more than one imperfection, she cannot be denied either courage, or intelligence, or heart. By her qualities as by her defects she was of the race of Henry IV. But she was more frank and more grateful than the Bearnais. Doubtless she did not have the genius, the prodigious ability, the fine and profound political sense, of that great man; but her nature was better, her generosity greater, her character more sympathetic.
VIII
THE ORLEANS FAMILY
At the accession of Charles X., Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, chief of the younger branch of the Bourbons, born at Paris, October 6th, 1773, was not yet fifty-seven years old. He married November 25th, 1809, Marie-Amelie, Princess of the Two Sicilies, whose father, Ferdinand I., reigned at Naples, and whose mother, the Queen Marie-Caroline, sister of Marie Antoinette, died at Venice, September 7th, 1814. Marie-Amelie, born April 26th, 1782, was forty-two years old when Charles X. ascended the throne. Of her marriage with the Duke of Orleans there were born five sons and four daughters:--
1. Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Charles-Henri-Roulin, Duke of Chartres, born at Palermo, September 3d, 1810. (When his father became King, he took the title of Duke of Orleans, and died from a fall from his carriage going from the Tuileries to Neuilly on the Chemin de la Revolte, July 13th, 1842.)
2. Louise-Marie-Therese-Caroline-Elisabeth, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, born at Palermo the 3d of April, 1812. (She married the King of the Belgians, Leopold I., August 9th, 1832, and died October 11th, 1850.)
3. Marie-Christine-Caroline-Adelaide-Francoise-Leopoldine, Mademoiselle de Valois, born at Palermo, April 12th, 1813. (She was designated by the name of the Princess Marie, distinguished herself in the arts, made the famous statue of Jeanne d'Arc, married October 17th, 1837, the Duke Frederic William of Wurtemberg, and died January 2d, 1839.)
4. Louis-Charles-Philippe-Raphael, Duke of Nemours, born at Paris, October 25th, 1814.
5. Marie-Clementine-Caroline-Leopoldine, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, born at Neuilly June 3d, 1817. (She was designated by the name of the Princess Clementine, and married, April 20th, 1843, the Prince August, of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.)
6. Francois-Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Marie, Prince de Joinville, born at Neuilly, August 14th, 1818.
7. Charles-Ferdinand-Louis-Philippe-Emmanuel, Duke of Penthievre, born at Paris, January 1st, 1820. (He died July 25th, 1828.)
8. Henri-Eugene-Philippe-Louis, Duke d'Aumale, born at Paris, January 16th, 1822.
9. Antoine-Marie-Philippe-Louis, Duke of Montpensier, born at Neuilly, July 5th, 1824.
The Duke of Orleans had a sister who lived with him at the Palais Royal, and was reputed to be his Egeria. She was Louise-Marie-Adelaide-Eugenie, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, as she was called under the Restoration. Born August 23d, 1777, she had been educated by Madame de Genlis, with her brother, and was said to be attached to the ideas of the Liberal party. (It was she who in 1830 decided Louis-Philippe to accept the crown, took the name of Madame Adelaide, and died, unmarried, some days before the revolution of the 24th of February, 1848.)
Marie-Amelie, Duchess of Orleans, was the sister of the Prince Royal of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand, father of the Duchess of Berry, and the niece was very fond of her aunt. The two Princesses were united by other bonds than those of blood. During all her infancy the Duchess of Berry had lived with her aunt at Palermo and Naples. Both were descended in direct line from the great Empress, Maria Theresa. Both had greatly loved the Queen Marie-Caroline, of whom one was the granddaughter, the other the daughter. Both professed great admiration for the Martyr-Queen, Marie Antoinette, of whom one was the grand-niece, the other the niece. The devotion and family feeling of the Duchess of Orleans won every one's sympathy for her, and the Duchess of Berry had a respectful attachment for her. Their relations were as constant as they were friendly. There existed between the Palais Royal and the Pavilion de Marsan, dwellings so near each other, a friendship and neighborliness that left nothing to be desired.
The Duke of Bordeaux and his sister, Mademoiselle, were very fond of their little Orleans cousins. There was a certain pleasure in thinking that the Duke of Chartres might one day become the husband of Mademoiselle. This young Prince, already very amiable and sympathetic, was the favorite of the Duchess of Berry. She said to herself that he would be the son-in-law of her dreams. Every time that she went to the Palais Royal, where her visits were incessant, she was received with transports of affection. Nowhere did she enjoy herself more. Louis-Philippe treated her with deference and courtesy. She believed sincerely in his friendship, and any one who had shown in her presence the least doubt of the loyalty of her aunt's husband would not have ventured to complete the phrase expressing it. The Duchess of Berry was to preserve this confidence until the Revolution of 1830.
Charles X. had a kindly feeling, founded on very real sympathy, for the Duke of Orleans and all his family. During the Emigration, as under the reign of Louis XVIII., he had always maintained very cordial relations with the Duke, and had tried to efface the bad memories of Philippe Egalite. Charles X. was as confiding as Louis XVIII. was distrustful. Optimist, like all good natures, the new King would not believe evil. He attributed to others his own good qualities. Louis XVIII. always had suspicions as to the Duke of Orleans. "Since his return," he said, in 1821, "the Duke of Orleans is the chief of a party without seeming to be. His name is a threatening flag, his palace a rallying-place. He makes no stir, but I can see that he makes progress. This activity without movement is disquieting. How can you undertake to check the march of a man who makes no step?" Every time the Duke attempted to bring up the question of exchanging his title of Most Serene Highness for that of Royal Highness, the King stubbornly resisted. "The Duke of Orleans is quite near enough to the throne already," he replied to all solicitations. "I shall be careful to bring him no nearer."
This refusal was very depressing to the Duke. One circumstance rendered it still more annoying. As a king's daughter, his wife was a Royal Highness. By this title she enjoyed honors denied to her husband. When she was present at court with him she was first announced, both doors of the salon being opened: "Her Royal Highness, Madame the Duchess of Orleans." Then one door having been closed, the usher announced: "His Most Serene Highness, Monseigneur the Duke of Orleans." This distinction was very disagreeable to the Duke. Charles X. hastened to abolish it. September 21st, 1824, he accorded the title of Royal Highness to the Duke of Orleans, and three days later he conferred this title, so much desired, on the children of the sister of the Duke. The latter showed his great pleasure. Though he might favor liberalism and give pledges to democracy, he remained a Prince to the marrow of his bones. He loved not only money, but honors, and attached extreme importance to questions of etiquette. The memories of his childhood and his early youth bound him to the old regime and despite appearances to the contrary, this Prince, so dear to the bourgeois and to the National Guard, was always by his tastes and aspirations a man of Versailles.
Charles X. would gladly have said to the Duke of Orleans, as Augustus to Cinna, speaking of his benefits:--
"Je t'en avais comble, je t'en veux accabler."
He was not content with according him a title of honor; he gave him something much more solid, by causing to be returned to him, with the consent of the Chambers, the former domain and privileges of the House of Orleans. This was not easy. It required not only the good-will of the Chateau, but the vote of the Chambers, and the majority was hardly favorable to the Duke of Orleans, of whom it cherished the same suspicions as Louis XVIII. The Duchess of Berry pleaded warmly the cause of her aunt's husband, and conspired with Charles X. against the Right, the members of which in this case believed it a service to royalty to disobey the King. The opposition to the project seemed likely to be so strong, that the government was obliged to commit a sort of moral violence upon the Chamber of Deputies. The King directed his ministers to join in some way the question of the apanages of the House of Orleans with the disposition of his own civil list. The King thought that the sentiments of the Chamber for himself and his family would make them adopt the whole en bloc. It was a device of his kindliness, a sort of smuggling in the King's coach, as was said by M. de Labourdonnaye. A large number of deputies demanded a division of the question. The ministers had to make great efforts and mount the tribune many times to defend the measure, which passed only by a very feeble majority. The Duke of Orleans, now at the very height of his desires, thanked Charles X. with effusion.
Nor was this all; from the millions of indemnity to the emigres, the Duke of Orleans drew 14,000,000 francs. The opposition chiefs of the Left imitated the Prince and profited largely by the law that they had opposed and condemned. The Duke of Choiseul obtained 1,100,000 francs, the Duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt 1,400,000 francs, M. Gaetan de La Rochefoucauld 1,429,000 francs, General Lafayette himself 1,450,000 francs.
The Orleanist party was already beginning to take form, perhaps without the knowledge of its chief. In his pamphlets of 1824, Paul-Louis Courier devoted himself to separating the older from the younger branch of the House, declaring that he should like to be a resident of a commune of Paris if the Duke of Orleans were its mayor, for from a Prince the Duke had become a man during the Emigration, and had never begged bread of a foreign hand. Louis-Philippe continued prudently the role he had played at the end of the first Restoration and during the Hundred Days. While professing an obsequious and enthusiastic respect for Charles X., he secretly flattered the Bonapartists and the Liberals. He sent his eldest son to the public school, as if to insinuate that he remained faithful to the ideas of equality from which his father had gained his surname. He made very welcome the coryphees of the Opposition, such as General Foy and M. Laffitte, to the Palais Royal, and received them in halls where the brush of Horace Vernet had represented the great battles of the tricolor flag. When General Foy died, in November, 1825, the Duke of Orleans put his name for ten thousand francs to the subscription opened to provide a fund for the children of the General. Some friendly representations were made from the Chateau to the Palais Royal on this matter. It was answered that the Duke of Orleans had subscribed not as Prince, but as a friend, and in private called attention to the modesty of the gift compared with others, with that of M. Casimir Perier, for example, which amounted to fifty thousand francs. This excuse was satisfactory at the Tuileries.
Is this saying that Louis-Philippe was already at this time thinking of dethroning his benefactor, his relative, and his King? We think not. He profited by the errors of Charles X.; but if Charles X. had not committed them, the idea of usurpation would not have occurred to the mind of the chief of the younger branch. Men are not so profoundly good or so profoundly wicked. They let themselves be carried further than they wish, and if the acts they are to commit some day were foretold them, the prophecies would most often seem to them as impossible as insulting.
Madame de Gontaut, Governess of the Children of France, recounts an incident that took place at the Louvre, December 22d, 1824, at the opening of the session of the Chambers: "The crowd was prodigious. The Dauphiness and the Duchess of Berry and Mademoiselle d'Orleans were present in one of the bays. The Children of France were there. The Duchess of Berry took the Duke of Bordeaux by her side. The Duchess of Orleans called Mademoiselle, whom she loved tenderly, to her. The canon announced the approach of the King. At the moment of his appearance the hall resounded with acclamations. The platform for the royal family was the one prepared for the late King; there had been left a slight elevation in it, that the King did not see, and he stumbled on it. With the movement his hat, held on his arm, fell; the Duke of Orleans caught it. The Duchess of Orleans said to me:--
"'The King was about to fall; my husband sustained him.'
"I answered: 'No, Madame; Monseigneur has caught His Majesty's hat.'
"The Dauphiness turned and looked at me. We did not speak of it until six months after. Neither of us had forgotten it."
A few years more and Charles X. was to drop, not his hat, but his crown.
IX
THE PRINCE OF CONDE
At the time of the accession of Charles X., the family of Conde was represented only by an old man of sixty-eight, Louis-Henri-Joseph de Bourbon-Conde, born April 13th, 1756. At the death of his father in 1818, he had taken the title of Prince of Conde, while retaining that of Duke of Bourbon, by which he had previously been designated. On the 10th of January, 1822, he lost his wife, Princess Louise-Marie-Therese-Bathilde, sister of the Duke of Orleans, mother of the unfortunate Duke d'Enghien, and he lost, on March 10th, 1824, his sister, Mademoiselle de Conde, the nun whose convent of the Perpetual Adoration was situated in the Temple near the site of the former tower where Louis XVI. and his family had been confined.
The Duke of Bourbon, in his youth, had had a famous duel with the Count of Artois, the future Charles X. No resentment subsisted between the two princes, who afterwards maintained the most cordial relations. During the Emigration, the Duke of Bourbon served with valor in the army of his father, the Prince of Conde. While the white flag floated at the head of a regiment he was found fighting for the royal cause; then, the struggle ended, he retired to England, where he had lived near Louis XVIII., and always at his disposition. Returning to France at the Restoration, he had since resided almost always at Chantilly or at Saint-Leu, without his wife, from whom he had long been separated. He was ranked as a reactionary, but busied himself little with politics, and exerted no influence.
The Count of Puymaigre, who, in his office as Prefect of the Oise, at the commencement of the reign of Charles X., often went to Chantilly, speaks of him in his Souvenirs:--
"The name of my father, much beloved by the late Prince of Conde, more than my title of Prefect, caused me to be received with welcome, and I took advantage of it the more gladly, because I have never seen a house where one was more at one's ease, and where there was more of that comfortable life known before the Revolution as the chateau life. There was little of the prince in him; he was more like an elderly bachelor who liked to have about him joy, movement, pleasure, a wholly Epicurean life. The society of Chantilly ordinarily consisted of the household of the Prince; that is to say, old servitors of his father, some ladies whose husbands held at this little court the places of equerries or gentlemen of the chamber, some persons who were invited, or like myself, had the right to come when they wished, and among this number I frequently saw the Prince of Rohan, relative of the Duke of Bourbon, disappointed since of the portion of the inheritance he hoped for; finally, some Englishmen and their wives. The tone was quite free, since the Prince set the example. And I recall that one day he recommended me to be gallant with one of the English ladies, who, he said, would like nothing better than to receive such attentions. That seemed very likely to me, but she was not young enough to tempt me to carry the adventure very far."