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The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X

by Imbert de Saint-Amand · English · Gutenberg #4289 · 427,291 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X

Author: Imbert de Saint-Amand


        
Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4289]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

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THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF CHARLES X


BY

IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND




CONTENTS

      I. THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES X
     II. THE ENTRY INTO PARIS
    III. THE TOMBS OF SAINT-DENIS
     IV. THE FUNERAL OF LOUIS XVIII
      V. THE KING
     VI. THE DAUPHIN AND DAUPHINESS
    VII. MADAME
   VIII. THE ORLEANS FAMILY
     IX. THE PRINCE OF CONDE
      X. THE COURT
     XI. THE DUKE OF DOUDEAUVILLE
    XII. THE HOUSEHOLD OF THE DUCHESS OF BERRY
   XIII. THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION
    XIV. THE CORONATION
     XV. CLOSE OF THE SOJOURN AT RHEIMS
    XVI. THE RE-ENTRANCE INTO PARIS
   XVII. THE JUBILEE OF 1826
  XVIII. THE DUCHESS OF GONTAUT
    XIX. THE THREE GOVERNORS
     XX. THE REVIEW OF THE NATIONAL GUARD
    XXI. THE FIRST DISQUIETUDE
   XXII. THE MARTIGNAC MINISTRY
  XXIII. THE JOURNEY IN THE WEST
   XXIV. THE MARY STUART BALL
    XXV. THE FINE ARTS
   XXVI. THE THEATRE OF MADAME
  XXVII. DIEPPE
 XXVIII. THE PRINCE DE POLIGNAC
   XXIX. GENERAL DE BOURMONT
    XXX. THE JOURNEY IN THE SOUTH





THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF CHARLES X




I

THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES X


Thursday, the 16th of September, 1824, at the moment when Louis XVIII.
was breathing his last in his chamber of the Chateau des Tuileries, the
courtiers were gathered in the Gallery of Diana. It was four o'clock in
the morning. The Duke and the Duchess of Angouleme, the Duchess of
Berry, the Duke and the Duchess of Orleans, the Bishop of Hermopolis,
and the physicians were in the chamber of the dying man. When the King
had given up the ghost, the Duke of Angouleme, who became Dauphin,
threw himself at the feet of his father, who became King, and kissed
his hand with respectful tenderness. The princes and princesses
followed this example, and he who bore thenceforward the title of
Charles X., sobbing, embraced them all. They knelt about the bed. The
De Profundis was recited. Then the new King sprinkled holy water on the
body of his brother and kissed the icy hand. An instant later M. de
Blacas, opening the door of the Gallery of Diana, called out:
"Gentlemen, the King!" And Charles X. appeared.

Let us listen to the Duchess of Orleans. "At these words, in the
twinkling of an eye, all the crowd of courtiers deserted the Gallery to
surround and follow the new King. It was like a torrent. We were borne
along by it, and only at the door of the Hall of the Throne, my husband
bethought himself that we no longer had aught to do there. We returned
home, reflecting much on the feebleness of our poor humanity, and the
nothingness of the things of this world."

Marshal Marmont, who was in the Gallery of Diana at the moment of the
King's death, was much struck by the two phrases pronounced at an
instant's interval by M. de Damas: "Gentlemen, the King is dead! The
King, gentlemen!"

He wrote in his Memoirs: "It is difficult to describe the sensation
produced by this double announcement in so brief a time. The new
sovereign was surrounded by his officers, and everything except the
person of the King was in the accustomed order. Beautiful and great
thought, this uninterrupted life of the depository of the sovereign
power! By this fiction there is no break in this protecting force, so
necessary to the preservation of society." The Marshal adds: "The
government had been in fact for a year and more in the hands of
Monsieur. Thus the same order of things was to continue; nevertheless,
there was emotion perceptible on the faces of those present; one might
see hopes spring up and existences wither. Every one accompanied the
new King to his Pavilion of Marsan. He announced to his ministers that
he confirmed them in their functions. Then every one withdrew."

While the Duchess of Berry was present at the death of Louis XVIII.,
the Duke of Bordeaux and his sister, Mademoiselle, then, the one four,
the other five years of age, remained at the Chateau of Saint Cloud,
with the Governess of the Children of France, the Viscountess of
Gontaut-Biron. This lady passed the night of the 15th of September in
great anxiety. She listened on the balcony, awaiting and dreading the
news.

At the moment that the day began to dawn, she heard afar the gallop of
a horse that drew near, passed the bridge, ascended the avenue, reached
the Chateau, and in response to the challenge of the guard, she
distinguished the words: "An urgent message for Madame the Governess."
It was a letter from the new King. Madame de Gontaut trembled as she
opened it. Charles X. announced to her, in sad words, that Louis XVIII.
was no more, and directed her to made ready for the arrival of the
royal family. "Lodge me where you and the governor shall see fit. We
shall probably pass three or four days at Saint Cloud. Communicate my
letter to the Marshal. I have not strength to write another word."

"The day was beginning to break," we read in the unpublished Memoirs of
the Governess of the Children of France. "I went to the bed of
Monseigneur. He was awakened. He was not surprised, and said nothing,
and allowed himself to be dressed. Not so with Mademoiselle. I told her
gently of the misfortune that had come upon her family. I was agitated.
She questioned me, asking where was bon-papa. I told her that he was
still in Paris, but was coming to Saint Cloud; then I added: 'Your
bon-papa, Mademoiselle, is King, since the King is no more.' She
reflected, then, repeating the word: 'King! Oh! that indeed is the
worst of the story.' I was astonished, and wished her to explain her
idea; she simply repeated it. I thought then she had conceived the
notion of a king always rolled about in his chair."

The same day the court arrived. It was no longer the light carriage
that used almost daily to bring Monsieur, to the great joy of his
grandchildren. It was the royal coach with eight horses, livery,
escort, and body-guard. The Duke of Bordeaux and his sister were on the
porch with their governess. On perceiving the coach, instead of
shouting with pleasure, as was their custom, they remained motionless
and abashed. Charles X. was pale and silent. In the vestibule he
paused: "What chamber have you prepared for me?" he said sadly to
Madame de Gontaut, glancing at the door of his own. The governess
replied: "The apartment of Monsieur is ready, and the chamber of the
King as well." The sovereign paused, then clasping his hands in
silence: "It must be!" he cried. "Let us ascend."

They followed him. He passed through the apartments. On the threshold
of the royal chamber Madame de Gontaut brought to Charles X. the Duke
of Bordeaux and Mademoiselle and he embraced them. The poor children
were disconcerted by so much sadness. "As soon as I can," he said to
them, "I promise to come to see you." Then turning to the company: "I
would be alone." All withdrew in silence. The Dauphiness was weeping.
The Dauphin had disappeared. Everything was gloomy. No one spoke. Thus
passed the first day of the reign of Charles X.

The next day the King received the felicitations of the Corps de
l'Etat. Many addresses were delivered. "All contained the expression of
the public love," said Marshal Marmont in his Memoirs, "and I believe
that they were sincere; but the love of the people is, of all loves,
the most fragile, the most apt to evaporate. The King responded in an
admirable manner, with appropriateness, intelligence, and warmth. His
responses, less correct, perhaps, than those of Louis XVIII., had
movement and spirit, and it is so precious to hear from those invested
with the sovereign powers things that come from the heart, that Charles
X. had a great success. I listened to him with care, and I sincerely
admired his facility in varying his language and modifying his
expressions according to the eminence of the authority from whom the
compliments came."

The reception lasted several hours. When the coaches had rolled away
and when quiet was re-established in the Chateau of Saint Cloud,
Charles X., in the mourning costume of the Kings, the violet coat, went
to the apartment of the Duke of Bordeaux and his sister. The usher
cried: "The King!" The two children, frightened, and holding each other
by the hand, remained silent. Charles X. opened his arms and they threw
themselves into them. Then the sovereign seated himself in his
accustomed chair and held his grandchildren for some moments pressed to
his heart. The Duke of Bordeaux covered the hands and the face of his
grandfather with kisses. Mademoiselle regarded attentively the altered
features of the King and his mourning dress, novel to her. She asked
him why he wore such a coat. Charles X. did not reply, and sighed. Then
he questioned the governess as to the impression made on the children
by the death of Louis XVIII. Madame de Gontaut hesitated to answer,
recalling the strange phrase of Mademoiselle: "King! Oh! that indeed is
the worst of the story." But the little Princess, clinging to her
notion, began to repeat the unlucky phrase. Charles X., willing to give
it a favorable interpretation, assured Mademoiselle that he would see
her as often as in the past, and that nothing should separate him from
her. The two children, with the heedlessness of their age, took on
their usual gaiety, and ran to the window to watch the market-men, the
coal heavers, and the fishwomen, who had come to Saint Cloud to
congratulate the new King.

The griefs of sovereigns in the period of their prosperity do not last
so long as those of private persons. Courtiers take too much pains to
lighten them. With Charles X. grief at the loss of his brother was
quickly followed by the enjoyment of reigning. Chateaubriand, who, when
he wished to, had the art of carrying flattery to lyric height,
published his pamphlet: Le roi est mart! Vive le roi! In it he said:
"Frenchmen, he who announced to you Louis le Desire, who made his voice
heard by you in the days of storm, and makes to you to-day of Charles
X. in circumstances very different. He is no longer obliged to tell you
what the King is who comes to you, what his misfortunes are, his
virtues, his rights to the throne and to your love; he is no longer
obliged to depict his person, to inform you how many members of his
family still exist. You know him, this Bourbon, the first to come,
after our disaster, worthy herald of old France, to cast himself, a
branch of lilies in his hand, between you and Europe. Your eyes rest
with love and pleasure on this Prince, who in the ripeness of years has
preserved the charm and elegance of his youth, and who now, adorned
with the diadem, still is but ONE FRENCHMAN THE MORE IN THE MIDST OF
YOU. You repeat with emotion so many happy mots dropped by this new
monarch, who from the loyalty of his heart draws the grace of happy
speech. What one of us would not confide to him his life, his fortune,
his honor? The man whom we should all wish as a friend, we have as
King. Ah! Let us try to make him forget the sacrifices of his life! May
the crown weigh lightly on the white head of this Christian Knight!
Pious as Saint Louis, affable, compassionate, and just as Louis XII.,
courtly as Francis I., frank as Henry IV., may he be happy with all the
happiness he has missed in his long past! May the throne where so many
monarchs have encountered tempests, be for him a place of repose!
Devoted subjects, let us crowd to the feet of our well-loved sovereign,
let us recognize in him the model of honor, the living principle of our
laws, the soul of our monarchical society; let us bless a guardian
heredity, and may legitimacy without pangs give birth to a new King!
Let our soldiers cover with their flags the father of the Duke of
Angouleme. May watchful Europe, may the factions, if such there be
still, see in the accord of all Frenchmen, in the union of the people
and the army, the pledge of our strength and of the peace of the
world!" The author of the Genie du Christianisme thus closed his prose
dithyramb: "May God grant to Louis XVIII. the crown immortal of Saint
Louis! May God bless the mortal crown of Saint Louis on the head of
Charles X.!"

In this chant in honor of the King and of royalty, M. de Chateaubriand
did not forget the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, nor the Duchess of
Berry and the Duke of Bordeaux. "Let us salute," he said, "the Dauphin
and Dauphiness, names that bind the past to the future, calling up
touching and noble memories, indicating the own son and the successor
of the monarch, names under which we find the liberator of Spain and
the daughter of Louis XVI. The Child of Europe, the new Henry, thus
makes one step toward the throne of his ancestor, and his young mother
guides him to the throne that she might have ascended."

Happy in the ease with which the change in the reign had taken place,
and seeing the unanimous manifestations of devotion and enthusiasm by
which the throne was surrounded, the Duchess of Berry regarded the
future with entire confidence. Inclined by nature to optimism, the
young and amiable Princess believed herself specially protected by
Providence, and would have considered as a sort of impiety anything
else than absolute faith in the duration of the monarchy and in respect
for the rights of her son. Had any one of the court expressed the
slightest doubt as to the future destiny of the CHILD OF MIRACLE, he
would have been looked upon as an alarmist or a coward. The royalists
were simple enough to believe that, thanks to this child, the era of
revolutions was forever closed. They said to themselves that French
royalty, like British royalty, would have its Whigs and its Tories, but
that it was forever rid of Republicans and Imperialists. At the
accession of Charles X. the word Republican, become a synonym of
Jacobin, awoke only memories of the guillotine and the "Terror." A
moderate republic seemed but a chimera; only that of Robespierre and
Marat was thought of. The eagle was no longer mentioned; and as to the
eaglet, he was a prisoner at Vienna. What chance of reigning had the
Duke of Reichstadt, that child of thirteen, condemned by all the Powers
of Europe? By what means could he mount the throne? Who would be regent
in his name? A Bonaparte? The forgetful Marie Louise? Such hypotheses
were relegated to the domain of pure fantasy. Apart from a few
fanatical old soldiers who persisted in saying that Napoleon was not
dead, no one, in 1824, believed in the resurrection of the Empire. As
for Orleanism, it was as yet a myth. The Duke of Orleans himself was
not an Orleanist. Of all the courtiers of Charles X., he was the most
eager, the most zealous, the most enthusiastic. In whatever direction
she turned her glance, the Duchess of Berry saw about her only reasons
for satisfaction and security.




II

THE ENTRY INTO PARIS


The Duchess of Berry took part in the solemn entry into Paris made by
Charles X., Monday, 27th September, 1824. She was in the same carriage
as the Dauphiness and the Duchess and Mademoiselle of Orleans. The King
left the Chateau of Saint Cloud at half-past eleven in the morning,
passed through the Bois de Boulogne, and mounted his horse at the
Barriere de l'Etoile. There he was saluted by a salvo of one hundred
and one guns, and the Count de Chambral, Prefect of the Seine,
surrounded by the members of the Municipal Council, presented to him
the keys of the city. Charles X. replied to the address of the Prefect:
"I deposit these keys with you, because I cannot place them in more
faithful hands. Guard them, gentlemen. It is with a profound feeling of
pain and joy that I enter within these walls, in the midst of my good
people,--of joy because I well know that I shall employ and consecrate
all my days to the very last, to assure and consolidate their
happiness." Accompanied by the princes and princesses of his family and
by a magnificent staff, the sovereign descended the Champs-Elysees to
the Avenue of Marigny, followed that avenue, and entered the Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Honore, before the Palace of the Elysee. At this moment,
the weather, which had been cold and sombre, brightened, and the rain,
which had been falling for a long time, ceased. The King heard two
child-voices crying joyously, "Bon-papa." It was the little Duke of
Bordeaux and his sister at a window of an entresol of the Elysee which
looked out upon the street. On perceiving his two grandchildren,
Charles X. could not resist the impulse to approach them. He left the
ranks of the cortege, to the despair of the grand-master of ceremonies.
The horse reared. A sergeant-de-ville seized him by the bit. Listen to
Madame de Gontaut: "I was frightened, and cried out. The King scolded
me for it afterward. I confessed my weakness; to fall at the first step
in Paris would have seemed an ill omen. The King subdued his fretful
horse, said a few tender words to the children, raised his hat
gracefully to the ladies surrounding us. A thousand voices shouted:
Vive le Roi! The grand-master was reassured, the horse was quieted, and
the King resumed his place. The carriage of the princes and princesses
passing at that moment, the little princes saw them--it was an added
joy."

The cortege followed this route: the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, the
boulevards to the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue Saint-Denis, the Place du
Chatelet, the Pont au Change, the Rue de la Bailer, the Marche-Neuf,
the Rue Neuve-Notre-Dame, the Parvis. At every moment the King reined
in his superb Arab horse to regard more at ease the delighted crowd. He
smiled and saluted with an air of kindness and a grace that produced
the best impression. Charles X. was an excellent horseman; he presented
the figure and air of a young man. The contrast naturally fixed in all
minds, between his vigorous attitude and that of his predecessor, an
infirm and feeble old man, added to the general satisfaction. The
houses were decorated with white flags spangled with fleurs-de-lis.
Triumphal arches were erected along the route of the sovereign. The
streets and boulevards were strewn with flowers. At the sight of the
monarch the happy people redoubled their acclamations. Benjamin
Constant shouted: "Vive le roi!"--"Ah, I have captured you at last,"
smilingly remarked Charles X.

Reaching the Parvis de Notre-Dame, the sovereign, before entering the
Cathedral, paused before the threshold of the Hotel-Dieu. Fifty nuns
presented themselves before him, "Sire," said the Prioress, "you pause
before the house so justly termed the Hotel-Dieu, which has always been
honored with the protection of our kings. We shall never forget, Sire,
that the sick have seen at their bedside the Prince who is today their
King. They know that at this moment your march is arrested by charity.
We shall tell them that the King is concerned for their ills, and it
will be a solace to them. Sire, we offer you our homage, our vows, and
the assurance that we shall always fulfil with zeal our duties to the
sick." Charles X. replied: "I know with what zeal you and these
gentlemen serve the poor. Continue, Mesdames, and you can count on my
benevolence and on my constant protection."

The King was received at the Metropolitan Church by the Archbishop of
Paris at the head of his clergy. The Domine salvum, fac regem, was
intoned and repeated by the deputations of all the authorities and by
the crowd filling the nave, the side-aisles, and the tribunes of the
vast basilica. Then a numerous body of singers sang the Te Deum. On
leaving the church, the King remounted his horse and returned to the
Tuileries, along the quais, to the sound of salvos of artillery and the
acclamations of the crowd. The Duchess of Berry, who had followed the
King through all the ceremonies, entered the Chateau with him, and
immediately addressed to the Governess of the Children of France this
note: "From Saint Cloud to Notre-Dame, from Notre-Dame to the
Tuileries, the King has been accompanied by acclamations, signs of
approval and of love."

Charles X., on Thursday, the 30th September, had to attend a review on
the Champ-de-Mars. The morning of this day, the readers of all the
journals found in them a decree abolishing the censorship and restoring
liberty of the press. The enthusiasm was immense. The Journal de Paris
wrote: "Today all is joy, confidence, hope. The enthusiasm excited by
the new reign would be far too ill at ease under a censorship. None can
be exercised over the public gratitude. It must be allowed full
expansion. Happy is the Council of His Majesty to greet the new King
with an act so worthy of him. It is the banquet of this joyous
accession; for to give liberty to the press is to give free course to
the benedictions merited by Charles X."

The review was superb. After having heard Mass in the chapel of the
Chateau of the Tuileries, the King mounted his horse at half-past
eleven, and, accompanied by the Dauphin, the Duke of Orleans, and the
Duke of Bourbon, proceeded to the Champ-de-Mars. Two caleches followed;
the one was occupied by the Dauphiness, the Duchess of Berry, and the
Duke of Bordeaux in the uniform of a colonel of cuirassiers,--a
four-year old colonel,--the other by the Duchess of Orleans and
Mademoiselle of Orleans, her sister-in-law. The weather was mild and
clear. The twelve legions of the National Guard on foot, the mounted
National Guard, the military household of the King, and all the
regiments of the royal guard, which the sovereign was about to review,
made a magnificent appearance. An immense multitude covered the slopes
about the Champ-de-Mars. Charles X. harvested the effect of the liberal
measure that he had first adopted. A thunder of plaudits and cheers
greeted his arrival on the ground. At one moment, when he found
himself, so to speak, tangled in the midst of the crowd, several
lancers of his guard sought to break the circle formed about him by
pushing back the curious with the handles of their lances. "My friends,
no halberds!" the King called to them. This happy phrase, repeated from
group to group, carried the general satisfaction to a climax. A witness
of this military ceremony, the Count of Puymaigre, at that time Prefect
of the Oise, says in his curious Souvenirs:--

"Charles X. appeared to have dissipated all the dangers that for ten
years had menaced his august predecessor.

"On all sides there rose only acclamations of delight in favor of the
new King, who showed himself so popular, and whose gracious countenance
could express only benevolent intentions. I was present, mingling with
the crowd, at the first review by Charles X. on the Champ-de-Mars, and
the remarks were so frankly royalist, that any one would have been
roughly treated by the crowd had he shown other sentiments."

The Duchess of Berry was full of joy. She quivered with pleasure. Very
popular in the army and among the people, as at court and in the city,
she was proud to show her fine child, who already wore the uniform, to
the officers and soldiers. She appeared to all eyes the symbol of
maternal love, and the mothers gazed upon her boy as if he had been
their own. As soon as the little Prince was seen, there was on every
face an expression of kindliness and sympathy. He was the Child of
Paris, the Child of France. Who could have foretold then that this
child, so loved, admired, applauded, would, innocent victim, less than
six years later, be condemned to perpetual exile, and by whom?

Charles X. had won a triumph. Napoleon, at the time of his greatest
glories, at the apogee of his prodigious fortunes, had never had a
warmer greeting from the Parisian people. In the course of the review
the King spoke to all the colonels. On his return to the Tuileries he
went at a slow pace, paused often to receive petitions, handed them to
one of his suite, and responded in the most gracious manner to the
homage of which he was the object. An historian not to be accused of
partiality for the Restoration has written: "On entering the Tuileries,
Charles X. might well believe that the favor that greeted his reign
effaced the popularity of all the sovereigns who had gone before. Happy
in being King at last, moved by the acclamations that he met at every
step, the new monarch let his intoxicating joy expand in all his words.
His affability was remarked in his walks through Paris, and the grace
with which he received all petitioners who could approach him."
Everywhere that he appeared, at the Hotel-Dieu, at Sainte-Genvieve, at
the Madeleine, the crowd pressed around him and manifested the
sincerest enthusiasm. M. Villemain, in the opening discourse of his
lectures on eloquence at the Faculty of Letters, was wildly applauded
when he pronounced the following eulogium on the new sovereign: "A
monarch kindly and revered, he has the loyalty of the antique ways and
modern enlightenment. Religion is the seal of his word. He inherits
from Henry IV. those graces of the heart that are irresistible. He has
received from Louis XIV. an intelligent love of the arts, a nobility of
language, and that dignity that imposes respect while it seduces." All
the journals chanted his praises. Seeing that the Constitutionnel
itself, freed from censorship, rendered distinguished homage to
legitimacy, he came to believe that principle invincible. He was called
Charles the Loyal. At the Theatre-Francais, the line of Tartufe--

    "Nous vivons sous un prince ennemi de la fraude"--

was greeted with a salvo of applause. The former adversaries of the
King reproached themselves with having misunderstood him. They
sincerely reproached themselves for their past criticisms, and adored
that which they had burned. M. de Vaulabelle himself wrote:--

"Few sovereigns have taken possession of the throne in circumstances
more favorable than those surrounding the accession of Charles X."

It seemed as if the great problem of the conciliation of order and
liberty had been definitely solved. The white flag, rejuvenated by the
Spanish war, had taken on all its former splendor. The best officers,
the best soldiers of the imperial guard, served the King in the royal
guard with a devotion proof against everything. Secret societies had
ceased their subterranean manoeuvres. No more disturbances, no more
plots. In the Chambers, the Opposition, reduced to an insignificant
minority, was discouraged or converted. The ambitious spirits of whom
it was composed turned their thoughts toward the rising sun. Peace had
happily fecundated the prodigious resources of the country. Finances,
commerce, agriculture, industry, the fine arts, everything was
prospering. The public revenues steadily increased. The ease with which
riches came inclined all minds toward optimism. The salons had resumed
the most exquisite traditions of courtesy and elegance. It was the
boast that every good side of the ancien regime had been preserved and
every bad one rejected. France was not only respected, she was a la
mode. All Europe regarded her with sympathetic admiration. No one in
1824 could have predicted 1880. The writers least favorable to the
Restoration had borne witness to the general calm, the prevalence of
good will, the perfect accord between the country and the crown. The
early days of the reign of Charles X. were, so to speak, the honeymoon
of the union of the King and France.




III

THE TOMBS OF SAINT-DENIS


The funeral solemnities of Louis XVIII. seemed to the people a mortuary
triumph of Royalty over the Revolution and the Empire. The profanations
of 1793 were expiated. Napoleon was left with the willow of Saint
Helena; the descendant of Saint Louis and of Louis XIV. had the
basilica of his ancestors as a place of sepulture, and the links of
time's chain were again joined. The obsequies of Louis XVIII. suggested
a multitude of reflections. It was the first time since the death of
Louis XV. in 1774, that such a ceremony had taken place. As was said by
the Moniteur:--

"This solemnity, absolutely novel for the greater number of the present
generation, offered an aspect at once mournful and imposing. A monarch
so justly regretted, a king so truly Christian, coming to take his
place among the glorious remains of the martyrs of his race and the
bones of his ancestors,--profaned, scattered by the revolutionary
tempest, but which he had been able again to gather,--was a grave
subject of reflection, a spectacle touching in its purpose and majestic
in the pomp with which it was surrounded."

Through what vicissitudes had passed these royal tombs, to which the
coffin of Louis XVIII. was borne! Read in the work of M. Georges
d'Heylli, Les Tombes royales de Saint-Denis, the story of these
profanations and restorations.

The Moniteur of the 6th of February, 1793, published in its literary
miscellany, a so-called patriotic ode, by the poet Lebrun, containing
the following strophe:--

    "Purgeons le sol des patriotes,
    Par des rois encore infectes.
    La terre de la liberte
    Rejette les os des despotes.
    De ces monstres divinises
    Que tous lea cercueils soient brises!
    Que leur memoirs soit fletrie!
    Et qu'avec leurs manes errants
    Sortent du sein de la patrie
    Les cadavres de ses tyrants!"

[Footnote: Let us purge the patriot soil--By kings still infected.--The
land of liberty--Rejects the bones of despots.--Of these monsters
deified--Let all the coffins be destroyed!--Let their memory
perish!--And with their wandering manes--Let issue from the bosom of
the fatherland--The bodies of its tyrants!]

These verses were the prelude to the discussion, some months later, in
the National Convention, of the proposition to destroy the monuments of
the Kings at Saint-Denis, to burn their remains, and to send to the
bullet foundry the bronze and lead off their tombs and coffins. In the
session of July 31, 1793, Barrere, the "Anacreon of the guillotine,"
read to the convention in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, a
report, which said:--

"To celebrate the day of August 10, which overthrew the throne, the
pompous mausoleums must be destroyed upon its anniversary. Under the
Monarchy, the very tombs were taught to flatter kings. Royal pride and
luxury could not be moderated even on this theatre of death, and the
bearers of the sceptre who had brought such ills on France and on
humanity seemed even in the grave to vaunt a vanished splendor. The
strong hand of the Republic should pitilessly efface these haughty
epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which might recall the
frightful memory of kings."

The project was voted by acclamation. The tombs were demolished between
the 6th and 8th of August, 1793, and the announcement was made for the
anniversary of the 10th of August, 1792, of "that grand, just, and
retributive destruction, required in order that the coffins should be
opened, and the remains of the tyrants be thrown into a ditch filled
with quick-time, where they may be forever destroyed. This operation
will shortly take place."

This was done in the following October. For some days there was carried
on a profanation even more sacrilegious than the demolition of the
tombs. The coffins containing the remains of kings and queens, princes
and princesses, were violated. On Wednesday, the 16th of October, 1798,
at the very hour that Marie Antoinette mounted the scaffold,--she who
had so wept for her son, the first Dauphin, who died the 4th of June,
1789, at the beginning of the Revolution,--the disinterrers of kings
violated the grave of this child and threw his bones on the refuse
heap. Iconoclasts, jealous of death, disputed its prey, and they
profaned among others the sepulchres of Madame Henrietta of England, of
the Princess Palatine, of the Regent, and of Louis XV.

In the midst of these devastations, some men, less insensate than the
others, sought at least to rescue from the hands of the destroyers what
might be preserved in the interest of art. Of this number was an
artist, Alexandre Lenoir, who had supervised the demolition of the
tombs of Saint-Denis. He could not keep from the foundry, by the terms
of the decree, the tombs of lead, copper, and bronze; but he saved the
others from complete destruction--those that may be seen to-day in the
church of Saint-Denis. He had them placed first in the cemetery of the
Valois, near the ditches filled with quicklime, where had been cast the
remains of the great ones of the earth, robbed of their sepulchres.
Later, a decree of the Minister of the Interior, Benezech, dated 19
Germinal, An IV., authorizing the citizen Lenoir to have the tombs thus
saved from destruction taken to the Museum of French Monuments, of
which he was the conservator, and which had been installed at Paris,
Rue des Petits Augustins. From thence they were destined to be returned
to the Church of Saint-Denis, under the reign of Louis XVIII.

At the height of his power, Napoleon dreamed of providing for himself
the same sepulture as that of the kings, his predecessors. He had
decided that he would be interred in the Church of Saint-Denis, and had
arranged for himself a cortege of emperors about the site that he had
chosen for the vault of his dynasty. He directed the construction of a
grand monument dedicated to Charlemagne, which was to rise in the
"imperialized" church. The great Carlovingian emperor was to have been
represented, erect, upon a column of marble, at the back of which
statues in stone of the emperors who succeeded him were to have been
placed. But at the time of Napoleon's fall, the monument had not been
finished. There had been completed only the statues, which have taken
their rank in the crypt. They represent Charlemagne, Louis le
Debonnaire, Charles le Chauve, Louis le Begue, Charles le Gros, and
even Louis d'Outremer, who, nevertheless, was only a king.

Like the Pharaohs of whom Bossuet speaks, Napoleon was not to enjoy his
sepulture. To be interred with pomp at Saint-Denis, while Napoleon, at
Saint Helena, rested under a simple stone on which not even his name
was inscribed, was the last triumph for Louis XVIII.,--a triumph in
death. The re-entrance of Louis XVIII. had been not only the
restoration of the throne, but that of the tombs. The 21st of January,
1815, twenty-two years, to the very day, after the death of Louis XVI.,
the remains of the unhappy King and those of his Queen, Marie
Antoinette, were transferred to the Church of Saint-Denis, where their
solemn obsequies were celebrated. Chateaubriand cried:--

"What hand has reconstructed the roof of these vaults and prepared
these empty tombs? The hand of him who was seated on the throne of the
Bourbons. O Providence! He believed that he was preparing the
sepulchres of his race, and he was but building the tomb of Louis XVI.
Injustice reigns but for a moment; it is virtue only that can count its
ancestors and leave a posterity. See, at the same moment, the master of
the earth falls, Louis XVIII. regains the sceptre, Louis XVI. finds
again the sepulture of his fathers."

At the beginning of the Second Restoration, the King determined, by a
decree of the 4th of April, 1816, that search should be made in the
cemetery of the Valois, about the Church of Saint-Denis, in order to
recover the remains of his ancestors that might have escaped the action
of the bed of quicklime, in which they had been buried under the
Terror. The same decree declared that the remains recovered should be
solemnly replaced in the Church of Saint-Denis.

Excavations were made in January, 1817, in the cemetery of the Valois,
and the bones thus discovered were transferred to the necropolis of the
kings.

"It was night," says Alexandre Lenoir, in his Histoire des Arts en
France par les Monuments. "The moon shone on the towers; the torches
borne by the attendants were reflected from the walls of the edifice.
What a spectacle! The remains of kings and queens, princes and
princesses, of the most ancient of monarchies, sought with pious care,
with sacred respect, in the ditches dug by impious arms in the evil
days. The bones of the Valois and the Bourbons found pele-mele outside
the walls of the church, and brought again, after a long exile, to
their ancient burial place."

In a little vault on the left were deposited the coffins containing the
bones of earlier date than the Bourbons, and a marble tablet was placed
upon it, with the inscription: "Here rest the mortal remains of
eighteen kings, from Dagobert to Henry III.; ten queens, from Nantilde,
wife of Dagobert, to Marguerite de Valois, first wife of Henry IV.;
twenty-four dauphins, princes, and princesses, children and
grandchildren of France; eleven divers personages (Hugues-le-grand,
four abbes of Saint-Denis, three chamberlains, two constables, and
Sedille de Sainte-Croix, wife of the Counsellor Jean Pastourelle). Torn
from their violated sepulchres the 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
October, 1793, and 18 January, 1794; restored to their tombs the 19
January, 1817."

On the right were placed the coffins enclosing the remains of the
princes and princesses of the house of Bourbon, the list of which is
given by a second marble plaque: "Here rest the mortal remains of seven
kings, from Charles V. to Louis XV.; seven queens, from Jeanne de
Bourbon, wife of Charles V., to Marie Leczinska, wife of Louis XV.;
dauphins and dauphinesses, princes and princesses, children and
grandchildren of France, to the number of forty-seven, from the second
son of Henry IV. to the Dauphin, eldest son of Louis XVI. Torn from
their violated sepulchres the 12, 14, 15, and 16 October, 1793;
restored to their tombs the 19 January, 1817."

Besides these vaults, there is one that bears the title of the "Royal
Vault of the Bourbons," though but a small number of princes and
princesses of this family are there deposited. There is where Louis
XVIII. was to rest. In 1815, there had been placed in this vault the
coffins of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, recovered on the site of
the former cemetery of the Madeleine. On the coffin of the King was
carved: "Here is the body of the very high, very puissant, and very
excellent Prince, Louis, 16th of the name, by the grace of God King of
France and Navarre." A like inscription on the coffin of the Queen
recited her titles.

In 1817, there had been put by the side of these two coffins those of
Madame Adelaide and of Madame Victorine, daughter of Louis XV., who
died at Trieste, one in 1799, the other in 1800, and whose remains had
just been brought from that city to Saint-Denis. There had also been
placed in the same vault a coffin containing the body of Louis VII.--a
king coming now for the first time, as Alexandre Lenoir remarks, to
take a place in the vault of these vanished princes, whose ranks are no
longer crowded, and which crime has been more prompt to scatter than
has Death been to fill them; also the coffin of Louise de Vaudemont,
wife of Henry III., the queen who was buried in the Church of the
Capucins, Place Vendome, and whose remains escaped profanation in 1793.
In this same vault were also two little coffins, those of a daughter
and a son of the Duke and Duchess of Berry, who died, one in 1817, the
other in 1818, immediately after birth, and the coffin of their father,
assassinated the 13th of February, 1820, on leaving the Opera. Such
were the companions in burial of Louis XVIII.




IV

THE FUNERAL OF LOUIS XVIII


Louis XVIII. died the 16th of September, 1824, at the Chateau of the
Tuileries. His body remained there until the 23d of September, when, to
the sound of a salvo of one hundred and one guns, it was borne to the
Church of Saint-Denis. The coffin remained exposed in this basilica
within a chapelle ardente, to the 24th of October, the eve of the day
fixed for the obsequies, and during all this time the church was filled
with a crowd of the faithful, belonging to all classes of society, who
gathered from Paris and all the surrounding communes, to render a last
homage to the old King. Sunday, 24th of October, at two o'clock in the
afternoon, the body was transferred from the chapelle ardente to the
catafalque prepared to receive it. Then the vespers and the vigils of
the dead were sung, and the Grand Almoner, clad in his pontifical
robes, officiated. The next day, Monday, the 25th of October, the
services of burial took place.

The Dauphin and Dauphiness left the Tuileries at 10:30 A.M., to be
present at the funeral ceremony. In conformity with etiquette, Charles
X. was not present. He remained at the Tuileries with the Duchess of
Berry, with whom he heard a requiem Mass in the chapel of the Chateau
at eleven o'clock. The Duchess was thus spared a painful spectacle.
With what emotion would she not have seen opened the crypt in which she
believed she would herself be laid, and which was the burial place of
her assassinated husband and of her two children, dead so soon after
their birth.

The ceremony commences in the antique necropolis. The interior of the
church is hung all with black to the spring of the arches, where
fleurs-de-lis in gold are relieved against the funeral hangings. The
light of day, wholly shut out, is replaced by an immense quantity of
lamps, tapers, and candles, suspended from a multitude of candelabra
and chandeliers. At the back of the choir shines a great luminous
cross. The Dauphiness, the Duchess of Orleans, the princes and
princesses, her children, her sister-in-law, are led to the gallery of
the Dauphiness. The church is filled with the crowd of constituted
authorities. At the entrance to the nave is seen a deputation of men
and women from the markets, and others who, according to the Moniteur,
have won the favor of admission to this sad ceremony by the grief they
manifested at the time of the King's death. The Dauphin advances, his
mantle borne from the threshold of the church to the choir by the Duke
of Blacas, the Duke of Damas, and the Count Melchior de Polignac. The
Duke of Orleans comes next. Three of his officers bear his mantle.

A salvo of artillery, responded to by a discharge of musketry,
announces the commencement of the ceremony. The Grand Almoner of France
says Mass. After the Gospel Mgr. de Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis,
ascends the pulpit and pronounces the funeral oration of the King. At
the close of the discourse another salvo of artillery and another
discharge of musketry are heard. The musicians of the Chapel of the
King, under the direction of M. Plantade, render the Mass of Cherubim.
At the Sanctus, twelve pages of the King, guided by their governor,
come from the sacristy, whence they have taken their torches, salute
the altar, then the catafalque, place themselves kneeling on the first
steps of the sanctuary, and remain there until after the Communion. The
De Profundis and the Libera are sung. After the absolutions, twelve
bodyguards advance to the catafalque, which recalls by its form the
mausoleums raised to Francis I. and to Henry II. by the architects of
the sixteenth century. It occupies the centre of the nave. The cords of
the pall are borne by the Chancellor Dambray in the name of the Chamber
of Peers, by M. Ravez in the name of the Chamber of Deputies, by the
Count de Seze in the name of the magistracy, by Marshal Moncey, Duke of
Conegliano, in the name of the army. The twelve bodyguards raise the
coffin from the catafalque, and bear it into the royal tomb. Then the
King-at-Arms goes alone into the vault, lays aside his rod, his cap,
and his coat-of-arms, which he also casts in, retires a step, and
cries: "Heralds-at-Arms, perform your duties."

The Heralds-at-Arms, marching in succession, cast their rods, caps,
coats-of-arms, into the tomb, then withdraw, except two, of whom one
descends into the vault to place the regalia on the coffin, and the
other is stationed on the first steps to receive the regalia and pass
them to the one who stands on the steps.

The King-at-Arms begins announcing the regalia. He says: "Marshal, Duke
of Ragusa, major-general of the Royal Guard, bring the flag of the
Royal Guard." The marshal rises from his place, takes the flag from the
hands of the officer bearing it, advances, salutes first the Dauphin,
then the Duke of Orleans, approaches the vault, makes a profound bow,
and places the flag in the hands of the Herald-at-Arms, standing on the
steps. He passes it to the second, who places it on the coffin. The
marshal salutes the altar and the princes and resumes his place.

The King-at-Arms continues the calls. "Monsieur the Duke of Mortemart,
captain-colonel of the regular foot-guards of the King, bring the
ensign of the company which you have in keeping." He summons in the
same manner the Duke of Luxembourg, the Duke of Mouchy, the Duke of
Gramont, the Duke d'Havre, who bring each the standard of the company
of the body-guards of which they are the four captains. The call of the
other regalia goes on in the following order:--

"Monsieur the Count of Peyrelongue, Equerry in Ordinary of His Majesty,
bring the spurs of the King.

"Monsieur the Marquis of Fresne, Equerry in Ordinary of His Majesty,
bring the gauntlets of the King.

"Monsieur the Chevalier de Riviere, Master of the Horse of His Majesty,
bring the coat-of-arms of the King.

"Monsieur the Marquis of Vernon, charged with the functions of First
Equerry, bring the helmet of the King.

"Monsieur the Duke of Polignac, charged with the functions of Grand
Equerry of France, bring the royal sword. (The royal sword is presented
before the vault only by the point, and is not carried down.)

"Monsieur the Prince de Talleyrand, Grand Chamberlain of France, bring
the banner."

There is seen approaching, the banner in his hand, an old man, slight,
lame, clad in satin and covered with embroidery, in gold and jewelled
decorations. It is the unfrocked priest who said the Mass of the
Champ-de-Mars, for the Fete de la Federation; it is the diplomat who
directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time of the murder of
the Duke d'Enghien; it is the courtier, who, before he was Grand
Chamberlain of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., was that of Napoleon. The
banner is presented before the vault only by one end. It is inclined
over the opening of the crypt, but is not cast in, salutes, for the
last time, the dead King, then rises as if to proclaim that the noble
banner of France dies not, and that the royalty sheltered beneath its
folds descends not into the tomb.

The King-at-Arms again cries:--

"Monsieur the Duke d'Uzes, charged with the functions of Grand Master
of France, come and perform your duty." Then the maitres de l'hotel,
the chambellans de l'hotel, and the first maitre de l'hotel approach
the vault, break their batons, cast them in, and return to their places.

The King-at-Arms summons the persons bearing the insignia of royalty.

"Monsieur the Duke of Bressac, bring la main de justice.

"Monsieur the Duke of Chevreuse, bring the sceptre.

"Monsieur the Duke of la Tremoille, bring the crown."

These three insignia are taken down into the vault, as were the flag
and the four standards.

Then the Duke d'Uzes, putting the end of the baton of Grand Master of
France within the vault, cries out: "The King is dead!"

The King-at-Arms withdraws three paces, and repeats in a low voice:
"The King is dead! the King is dead! the King is dead!" Then turning to
the assembly he says: "Pray for the repose of his soul!"

At this moment the clergy and all the assistants throw themselves upon
their knees, pray, and rise again. The Duke d'Uzes withdraws his baton
from the vault, and brandishing it, calls out: "Long live the King!"

The King-at-Arms repeats: "Long live the King! long live the King! long
live the King! Charles, tenth of the name, by the grace of God, King of
France and Navarre, very Christian, very august, very puissant, our
very honored lord and good master, to whom God grant long and happy
life! Cry ye all: Long live the King!" Then the trumpets, drums, fifes,
and instruments of the military bands break into a loud fanfare, and
their sound is mingled with the prolonged acclamations of the assembly,
whose cries "Long live the King! long live Charles X.!" contrast with
the silence of the tombs.

"To this outburst of the public hopes," says the Moniteur, "succeeded
the return of pious and mournful duties; the tomb is closed over the
mortal remains of the monarch whose subjects, restored to happiness,
greeted him on his return from the land of exile with the name of Louis
le Desire, and who twice reconciled his people with Europe. This
imposing ceremony being ended, the princes were again escorted into the
Abbey to their apartments, by the Grand Master, the Master of
Ceremonies and his aides, preceded by the Master-at-Arms, and the
Heralds-at-Arms, who had resumed their caps, coats-of-arms, and rods.
Then the crowd slowly dispersed. We shall not try to express the
sentiments to which this imposing and mournful ceremony must give rise.
With the regrets and sorrow caused by the death of a prince so justly
wept, mingle the hopes inspired by a King already the master of all
hearts. This funeral ceremony when, immediately after the burial of a
monarch whom God had called to Himself, were heard cries of 'Long live
Charles X.,'--the new King greeted at the tomb of his august
predecessor,--this inauguration, amid the pomps of death, must have
left impressions not to be rendered, and beyond the power of
imagination to represent."

Reader, if this recital has interested you, go visit the Church of
Saint-Denis. There is not, perhaps, in all the world, a spectacle more
impressive than the sight of the ancient necropolis of kings. Enter the
basilica, admirably restored under the Second Empire. By the mystic
light of the windows, faithful reproductions of those of former
centuries,--the funerals of so many kings, the profanations of 1793,
the restoration of the tombs,--all this invades your thought and
inspires you with a dim religious impression of devotion. These stones
have their language. Lapides clamabunt. They speak amid the sepulchral
silence. Listen to the echo of a far-away voice. There, under these
arches, centuries old, the 21st of August, 1670, Bossuet pronounced the
funeral oration of Madame Henriette of England. He said:--

"With whatever haughty distinction men may flatter themselves, they all
have the same origin, and this origin insignificant. Their years follow
each other like waves; they flow unceasingly, and though the sound of
some is slightly greater and their course a trifle longer than those of
others, they are together confounded in an abyss where are known
neither princes nor kings nor the proud distinctions of men, as the
most boasted rivers mingle in the ocean, nameless and inglorious with
the least known streams."

Is not the Church of Saint-Denis itself a funeral discourse in stone
more grandiose and eloquent than that of the reverend orator? Regard on
either side of the nave these superb mausoleums, these pompous tombs
that are but an empty show, and since their dead dwell not in them,
contemplate these columns that seem to wish to bear to heaven the
splendid testimony of our nothingness! There, at the right of the main
altar, descend the steps that lead to the crypt. There muse on all the
kings, the queens, the princes, and princesses, whose bones have been
replaced at hazard within these vaults, after their bodies had been, in
1793, cast into a common ditch in the cemetery of the Valois to be
consumed by quicklime. The great ones of the earth, dispossessed of
their sepulchres, could they not say, in the region of shades, in the
mournful words of the Sermonnaire:--

"Death does not leave us body enough to require room, and it is only
the tombs that claim the sight; our body takes another name; even that
of corpse, since it implies something of the human form, remains to it
but a little time; it becomes a something nameless in any tongue, so
truly does everything die in it, even the funeral terms by which its
unhappy remains are designated. Thus the Power divine, justly angered
by our pride, reduces it to nothingness, and, to level all conditions
forever, makes common ashes of us all."

The remains of so many sovereigns and princes are no longer even
corpses. The corpses have perished as ruins perish. You may no longer
see the coffins of the predecessors of Louis XVI. But those of the
Martyr-King, of the Queen Marie Antoinette, of the Duke of Berry, of
Louis XVIII., are there before you in the crypt. Pause. Here is the
royal vault of the Bourbons. Your glance can enter only a narrow grated
window, through which a little twilight filters. If a lamp were not
lighted at the back, the eye would distinguish nothing. By the doubtful
gleam of this sepulchral lamp, you succeed in making out in the gloom
the coffins placed on trestles of iron; to the left that of the Duke of
Berry, then the two little coffins of his children, dead at birth; then
in two rows those of Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, daughters of Louis
XV., those of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, those of the two last
Princes of Conde, died in 1818 and in 1830, and on the right, at the
very extremity of the vault, that of the only sovereign who, for the
period of a century, died upon the throne, Louis XVIII.

The royal vault of the Bourbons was diminished more than half to make
room for the imperial vault constructed under Napoleon III. The former
entrance, on the steps of which stand the Heralds-at-Arms at the
obsequies of the kings, has been suppressed. The coffin of Louis XVIII.
was not placed on the iron trestles, where it rests to-day, at the time
of his funeral. It was put at the threshold of the vault, where it was
to have been replaced by that of Charles X.; for by the ancient
tradition, when a king of France dies, as his successor takes his place
on the throne, so he, in death, displaces his predecessor. But Louis
XVIII. waited in vain for Charles X. in the royal vault of the
Bourbons; the last brother of Louis XVI. reposes in the chapel of the
Franciscans at Goritz.

Charles X. is not alone in being deprived of his rights in his tomb;
the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme and the Count of Chambord were so,
and also Napoleon III. The second Emperor and Prince Imperial, his son,
sleep their sleep in England; for the Bonapartes, like the Bourbons,
have been exiled from Saint-Denis. By a decree of the 18th of November,
1858, the man who had re-established the Empire decided that the
imperial dynasty should have its sepulture in the ancient necropolis of
the kings. Napoleon III. no more, realized his dream than Napoleon I.
He had completed under his reign the magnificent vault destined for
himself and his race. But once more was accomplished the Sic vos non
vobis, and no imperial corpse has ever taken its place in the still
empty Napoleonic vault. The opening situated in the church, near the
centre of the nave, is at present closed by enormous flagstones framed
in copper bands; and as there is no inscription on these, many people
whose feet tread them in visiting the church do not suspect that they
have beneath them the stairway of six steps leading down to the vault
that was to be the burial place of emperors. "Oh, vanity! Oh,
nothingness! Oh, mortals ignorant of their destinies!" It is not enough
that contending dynasties dispute each other's crowns; their
covetousness and rivalry must extend to their tombs. Not enough that
sovereigns have been exiled from their country; they must be exiled
from their graves. Disappointments in life and in death. This is the
last word of divine anger, the last of the lessons of Providence.




V

THE KING


Born at Versailles, the 9th of October, 1757, Charles X., King of
France and Navarre, was entering his sixty-eighth year at the time of
his accession to the throne. According to the portrait traced by
Lamartine, "he had kept beneath the first frosts of age the freshness,
the stature, the suppleness, and beauty of youth." His health was
excellent, and but for the color of his hair--almost white--he would
hardly have been given more than fifty years. As alert as his
predecessor was immobile, an untiring hunter, a bold rider, sitting his
horse with the grace of a young man, a kindly talker, an affable
sovereign, this survivor of the court of Versailles, this familiar of
the Petit-Trianon, this friend of Marie Antoinette, of the Princess of
Lamballe, of the Duchess of Polignac, of the Duke of Lauzun, of the
Prince de Ligne, preserved, despite his devotedness, a great social
prestige. He perpetuated the traditions of the elegance of the old
regime. Having lived much in the society of women, his politeness
toward them was exquisite. This former voluptuary preserved only the
good side of gallantry.

The Count d'Haussonville writes in his book entitled Ma Jeunesse:--

"I have often seen Charles X. on horseback reviewing troops or
following the chase; I have heard him, seated on his throne, and
surrounded with all the pomp of an official cortege, pronounce the
opening discourse of the session; I have many times been near him at
the little select fetes that the Duchess of Berry used to give, of a
morning, in the Pavilion de Marsan, to amuse the Children of France, as
they were then called, and to extend their acquaintance with the young
people of their own age. One day when I was visiting with my parents
some exposition of objects of art or flowers in one of the lower halls
of the Louvre, I saw him approach my mother--whom he had known in
England--with a familiarity at once respectful and charming. He plainly
wished to please those whom he addressed, and he had the gift of doing
so. In that kind of success he was rarely wanting, especially with
women. His physiognomy as well as his manner helped. It was open and
benevolent, always animated by an easy, perhaps a slightly commonplace
smile, that of a man conscious that he was irresistible, and that he
could, with a few amiable words, overcome all obstacles."

The fiercest adversaries of Charles X. never denied the attraction
emanating from his whole personality, the chief secret of which was
kindliness. In his constant desire to charm every one that approached
him, he had a certain something like feminine coquetry. The Count of
Puymaigre, who, being the Prefect of the Oise, saw him often at the
Chateau of Compiegne, says:--

"If the imposing tone of Louis XVIII. intimidated, it was not so with
Charles X.; there was rather danger of forgetting, pacing the room with
him, that one was talking with a king."

Yet, whatever may be asserted, the new monarch never dreamed of
restoring the old regime. We do not believe that for a single instant
he had the insensate idea of putting things back to where they were
before 1789. His favorite minister, M. de Villele, was not one of the
great nobles, and the men who were to take the chief parts in the
consecration were of plebeian origin. The impartial historian of the
Restoration, M. de Viel-Castel, remarked it:--

"Charles X. by this fact alone, that for three years he had actively
shared in affairs and saw the difficulty of them better, by the fact
that he was no longer exasperated by the heat of the struggle and by
impatience at the political nullity to which events had so long
condemned him, had laid aside a part of his former exaggeration. In the
lively satisfaction he felt in entering at last, at the age of
sixty-seven, upon the enjoyment of the supreme power by the perspective
of which his imagination had been so long haunted, he was disposed to
neglect nothing to capture public favor, and thus gain the chance to
realize the dreams of his life. His kindliness and natural courtesy
would have inspired these tactics, even if policy had not suggested
them."

The dignity of the private life of the King added to the respect
inspired by his personality. His morals were absolutely irreproachable.
His wife, Marie Therese of Savoy, died the 2d of June, 1805; he never
remarried, and his conduct had been wholly edifying. The sacrifice he
made to God, in renouncing the love of women, after he lost his
well-beloved Countess of Polastron by death in 1803, was the more
meritorious, because, apart from the prestige of his birth and rank, he
remained attractive longer than men of his age. No such scandals as had
dishonored the court of nearly all his predecessors occurred in his,
and the most malevolent could not charge him with having a favorite. In
his home he was a man as respectable as he was attractive, a tender
father, a grandfather even more tender, an affectionate uncle, a
gentle, indulgent master for his servants. None of the divisions that
existed in the family of Louis XVIII. appeared in that of his
successor; perfect harmony reigned in the court of the Tuileries.

Of a mind more superficial than profound, Charles X. did not lack
either in tact or in intelligence. He sincerely desired to do right,
and his errors were made in good faith, in obedience to the mandates of
his conscience. Lamartine, who had occasion to see him near at hand,
thus sums up his character:--

"A man of heart, and impulsive, all his qualities were gifts of nature;
hardly any were the fruit acquired by labor and meditation. He had the
spirit of the French race, superficial, rapid, spontaneous, and happy
in the hazard of repartee, the smile kindly and communicative, the
glance open, the hand outstretched, the attitude cordial, an ardent
thirst for popularity, great confidence in his relations with others, a
constancy in friendship rare upon the throne, true modesty, a restless
seeking for good advice, a conscience severe for himself and indulgent
for others, a piety without pettiness, a noble repentance for the sole
weaknesses of his life, his youthful amours, a rational and sincere
love for his people, an honest and religious desire to make France
happy and to render his reign fruitful in the moral improvement and the
national grandeur of the country confided to him by Providence. All
these loyal dispositions were written on his physiognomy. A lively
frankness, majesty, kindness, honesty, candor, all revealed therein a
man born to love and to be loved. Depth and solidity alone were wanting
in this visage; looking at it, you were drawn to the man, you felt
doubts of the King."

This remark, just enough at the end of Charles X.'s reign, was hardly
so at the outset. In 1824 people had no doubts of the man or of the
King. The French were content with Charles X., and Charles X. was
content with himself.

The new King said to himself that his policy was the right one,
because, from the moment of his accession, all hatreds were appeased.
With the absolute calm enjoyed by France he compared the agitations,
plots, violence, the troubles and the fury of which it had been the
theatre under the Decazes ministry. From the day the Right had assumed
power, and Louis XVIII. had allowed his brother to engage in public
affairs, the victory of royalty had been complete and manifest. Charles
X. thought then that the results had sustained him; that foresight,
virtue, political sense, were on his side. Needless to say, every one
about him supported him in that idea, that he believed in all
conscience that he was in the right, obeying the voice of honor and
acting like a king and a Christian. Any other policy than his own would
have seemed to him foolish and cowardly. To hear his courtiers, one
would have said that the age of gold had returned in France; the
felicitations offered him took an idyllic tone. The Count of Chabrol,
Prefect of the Seine, said to him, January 1, 1825, at the grand
reception at the Tuileries:--

"At your accession, Sire, a prestige of grace and power calmed, in the
depths of all hearts, the last murmur of the storm, and the peace that
we enjoy to-day is embellished by a charm that is yours alone."

The same day the Drapeau Blanc said:--

"Why is there an unusual crowd passing about the palace of the
cherished monarch and princes? It is watching with affection for a
glance or smile from Charles! These are the new-year gifts for the
people moved by love for the noble race of its kings. This glance,
expressing only goodness, this smile so full of grace, they long for
everywhere and always before their eyes. His classic and cherished
features are reproduced in every form; every public place has its bust,
every hut its image; they are the domestic gods of a worship that is
pure and without superstition, brought to our families by peace and
happiness." The aurora of Charles X.'s reign was like that of his
brother Louis XVI. The two brothers resembled travellers who, deceived
by the early morning sun and the limpid purity of the sky, set forth
full of joy and confidence, and are suddenly surprised by a frightful
tempest. The new James II. imagined that his royalty had brought his
trials to an end. It was, on the contrary, only a halt in the journey
of misfortune and exile. He believed the Revolution finished, and it
had but begun.




VI

THE DAUPHIN AND DAUPHINESS


At the accession of Charles X., the royal family, properly speaking,
consisted of six persons only,--the King, the Duke and Duchess of
Angouleme, the Duchess of Berry and her two children (the Duke of
Bordeaux and Mademoiselle). By the traditions of the monarchy, the Duke
of Angouleme, as son and heir of the King, took the title of Dauphin,
and his wife that of Dauphiness. The Duchess of Berry, who, under the
reign of Louis XVIII. was called Madame the Duchess of Berry, was by
right, henceforward, called simply Madame, a privilege that belonged to
the Duchess of Angouleme before she was Dauphiness. That is why the
Gymnase, the theatre under the special protection of the Duchess of
Berry, was called, after the new reign began, the Theatre de Madame.

Born at Versailles the 5th of August, 1775, the Duke of Angouleme had
just entered on his fiftieth year. A tender and respectful son, an
irreproachable husband, a brave soldier, he was lacking in both
brilliant and solid qualities. His awkward air, his bashfulness, his
myopia, his manners rather bourgeois than princely, were against him.
He had nothing of the charm and grace of his father. But when one knew
him, it was easy to see that he had unquestioned virtues and real
worth. To Charles X. he was a most faithful subject and the best of
sons. In contrast with so many heirs apparent, who openly or secretly
combat the political ideas of their fathers, he was always the humble
and docile supporter of the throne. The Spanish expedition brought him
credit. In it he showed courage and zeal. The army esteemed him, and he
gave serious attention to military matters. A man of good sense and
good faith, he held himself aloof from all exaggerations. At the time
of the reaction of the White Terror, he had repudiated the fury of the
ultras, and distinguished himself by a praiseworthy moderation. He had
great piety, with out hypocrisy, bigotry, or fanaticism. The Count of
Puymaigre, in his curious Souvenirs, says:--

"The Duke of Angouleme appeared to me to be always subordinated to the
will of the King, and he said to me one day very emphatically that his
position forbade any manifestation of personal sentiment, because it
was unbecoming in the heir apparent to sustain the opposition. Though
very religious, he did not share the exaggerated ideas of what was then
called the 'congregation,' and I recall that one day he asked me
brusquely: 'Are you a partisan of the missions?' As I hesitated to
reply, he insisted. 'No, my lord, in nowise; I think that one good cure
suffices for a commune, and that missionaries, by treating the public
mind with an unusual fervor, often bring trouble with them and at the
same time often lessen the consideration due to the resident priest.'"

Married, on the 10th of June, 1799, to the daughter of Louis XVI. and
Marie Antoinette, the Duke of Angouleme had no children; but though the
sterilty of his wife was an affliction, he never complained of it. He
was not known to have either favorites or mistresses. The life of this
descendant of Louis XIV. and of Louis XV. was purity itself. There were
neither scandals nor intrigues about him. By nature irascible and
obstinate, he had modified this tendency of his character by reason and
still more by religion. Assiduous in his duties, without arrogance or
vanity, regarding his role as Prince as a mission given him by
Providence, which he wished to fulfil conscientiously, he had not the
slightest mental reservation in favor of restoring the old regime, and
showed, perhaps, more favor to the lieutenants of Napoleon than to the
officers of the army of Conde, his companions in arms. To sum up, he
was not an attractive prince, but he merited respect. The Count of
Puymaigre thus concludes the portrait traced by him:--

"The manner, bearing, and gestures of the Duke of Angouleme cannot be
called gracious, especially in contrast with his father's manners;
doubtless it is not fair to ask that a prince, any more than another,
should be favored by nature, but it is much to be desired that he shall
have an air of superiority. The ruling taste of the Dauphin was for the
chase. He also read much and gave much time to the personnel of the
army. Retiring early, he arose every morning at five o'clock, and
lighted his own fire. Far from having anything to complain of in him, I
could only congratulate myself on his kindness."

The Dauphiness, Marie-Theresa-Charlotte of France, Duchess of
Angouleme, born at Versailles the 19th of December, 1778, was
forty-five years old when her uncle and father-in-law, Charles X.,
ascended the throne. She was surrounded by universal veneration. She
was regarded, and with reason, as a veritable saint, and by all parties
was declared to be sans peur et sans reproche.

The Duchess of Angouleme, shunning the notoriety sought by other
princesses, preferred her oratory to the salons. Yet her devotion had
nothing mean or narrow in it. Despite the legendary catastrophes that
weighed upon her, she always appeared at fetes where her presence was
demanded. She laughed with good heart at the theatre, and there was
nothing morose or ascetic in her conversation. She never spoke of her
misfortunes. One day she was pitying a young girl who suffered from
chilblains. "I know what it is," she said; "I have had them." Then she
added, without other comment: "True, the winters were very severe at
that time." She did not wish to say that she had had these chilblains
while a prisoner in the Temple, when fuel was refused to her.

But if the Princess never spoke of herself, she never ceased to think
of the martyrs for whom she wept. At the Tuileries, she occupied the
Pavillon de l'Horloge and the Pavillon de Flore, the first floor
apartments that had been her mother's. She used for her own a little
salon hung with white velvet sown with marguerite lilies. This tapestry
was the work of the unhappy Queen and of Madame Elisabeth. In the same
room was a stool on which Louis XVII. had languished and suffered. It
served as prie-dieu to the Orphan of the Temple. There was in this
stool a drawer where she had put away the remaining relics of her
parents: the black silk vest and white cravat worn by Louis XVI. the
day of his death; a lace bonnet of Marie Antoinette, the last work done
by the Queen in her prison of the Conciergerie, which Robespierre had
had taken from her on the pretext that the widow of the Christian King
might kill herself with her needle or with a lace-string; finally some
fragments of the fichu which the wind raised from the shoulders of
Madame Elisabeth when the angelic Princess was already on the scaffold.
The Dauphiness, who usually dined with the King, dined alone on the
21st of January and the 16th of October. She shut herself in the
chamber where she had collected these relics and passed the whole day
and evening there in prayer.

The charity of the pious Princess was inexhaustible. Almost all her
revenue was expended in alms. She would not have receipts signed by
those to whom she distributed relief. "The duty of givers," she said,
"is to forget their gifts and the names of those who receive them; it
is for those who receive to remember." Nor did she ever ask the
political opinions of those she relieved. To be unfortunate, sufficed
to excite her interest. One day Sister Rosalie, charged by the Princess
with paying a pension to a man whose ill conduct she had discovered,
thought it her duty to notify the benefactress, and suspend the succor.
"My sister," replied the Dauphiness, "continue to pay this man his
pension. We must be charitable to the good that they may persevere, and
to the bad that they may become better." Sunday, when the Princess did
no work, she passed the evening in detaching the wax seals from letters
and envelopes. This wax, converted into sticks, produced one thousand
francs a year, which she sent to a poor family. She gave much, but only
to Frenchmen and Frenchwomen. She replied to every demand for aid for
foreigners that she was sorry not to comply with the request, but she
should feel that she was doing an injustice to give to others while
there was a single Frenchman in need. On each anniversary of mourning
she doubled her alms.

The existence of the Dauphiness at the Tuileries passed with extreme
regularity. A very early riser, like her husband, she made her toilet
herself, having learned to help herself in her captivity in the Temple.
She used to breakfast at six o'clock, and at seven daily attended the
first Mass in the chapel of the Chateau. There was a second at nine
o'clock for the Dauphin, and a third at eleven for the King. From eight
to eleven she held audiences. She retired at ten o'clock, and only
prolonged the evening to eleven when, she visited the Duchess of Berry,
for whom she had a great affection, and whose children she saw two or
three times a day. A devoted companion of Charles X., she always went
with him to the various royal chateaux. The Count of Puy maigre says in
his Souvenirs:--

"The Dauphiness having by her kindness accustomed me to speaking
freely, I used this privilege without embarrassment, but always
observing that measure which keeps a man of good society within just
limits, equally careful not to put himself ridiculously at ease and not
to be so abashed by exaggerated respect as to become insipid. I have
always thought that a princess no more than any other woman likes to be
bored. I talked much with her in the carriage, seeking to amuse the
Princess with a few anecdotes, and I did not fear to discuss serious
things with her, on which she expressed her self with real sagacity.
When she was accused of want of tact in the numerous receptions of
which one had to undergo the monotony, it was often the fault of her
immediate companions, who neglected to give her suitable information as
to the various persons received. How many times I have hinted to her to
speak to some devoted man, who regarded a word from the Princess as a
signal favor, to yield to requests, perhaps untimely, to visit some
establishment, to receive the humble petitions of a mayor, a cure, or a
municipal council. I will not deny that she had a sort of brusqueness,
partly due to an exceedingly high voice, and moments of ill humor,
transient no doubt, but which nevertheless left a painful impression on
those who were subjected to them. Madame the Dauphiness made no mistake
as to the state of France; she was not the dupe of the obsequiousness
of certain men of the court, and merit was certain to obtain her
support whether it had been manifested under the old or the new regime;
but she had not the influence she was supposed to have, and I doubt if
she tried to acquire it."

One day the Princess was talking to the Prefect of the Oise about the
great noblemen who had possessions in the Department.

"Have they any influence over the people?" she asked him.

"No, Madame, and it is their own fault. M. de La Rochefoucauld is the
only one who is popular, but his influence is against you. As to the
others, greedy of the benefits of the court, they come to their estates
only to save money, to regulate their accounts with their managers, and
the people, receiving no mark of their interest, acknowledge no
obligation to them."

"You are perfectly right," replied the Dauphiness, "that is not the way
with the English aristocracy."

"She saw with pain," adds M. de Puymaigre, "the marriages for money
made by certain men of the court, but not when they allied themselves
with an honorable plebeian family; her indignation was justly shown
toward those who took their wives in families whose coveted riches came
from an impure source."

The extraordinary catastrophes that had fallen on the daughter of Louis
XVI. and Marie Antoinette had been a great experience for her, and she
was not surprised at the recantations of the courtiers. The Hundred
Days had, perhaps, suggested even more reflections to her than her
captivity in the Temple or her early exile. She could not forget how,
in 1815, she had been abandoned by officers who, but the day before,
had offered her such protestations and such vows. In the midst of
present prosperity she had a sort of instinct of future adversity.
Something told her that she was not done with sorrow, and that the cup
of bitterness was not drained to the dregs. While every one about her
contemplated the future with serene confidence, she reflected on the
extreme mobility of the French character, and still distrusted
inconstant fortune. The morrow of the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux one
of her household said to her:--

"Your Highness was very happy yesterday."

"Yes, very happy yesterday," responded the daughter of Louis XVI., "but
to-day I am reflecting on the destiny of this child."

To any one inclined to be deceived by the illusions of the prestige
surrounding the accession of Charles X., it ought to have sufficed to
cast a glance on the austere countenance of the Orphan of the Temple,
to be recalled to the tragic reality of things. The King had for his
niece and daughter-in-law an affection blended with compassion and
respect. The pious and revered Princess gave to the court a character
of gravity and sanctity.




VII

MADAME


The Duchess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry lived on the best of
terms, showing toward each other a lively sympathy. Yet there was
little analogy between their characters, and the two Princesses might
even be said to form a complete contrast, one representing the grave
side, the other the smiling side of the court.

Born November 7, 1798, and a widow since February 14, 1820, Madame (as
the Duchess of Berry was called after the Duchess of Angouleme became
Dauphiness) was but twenty-five when her father-in-law, Charles X.,
ascended the throne. She was certainly not pretty, but there was in her
something seductive and captivating. The vivacity of her manner, her
spontaneous conversation, her ardor, her animation, her youth, gave her
charm. Educated at the court of her grandfather, Ferdinand, King of
Naples, who carried bonhomie and familiarity to exaggeration, and lived
in the company of peasants and lazzaroni, she had a horror of
pretension and conceit. Her child-like physiognomy had a certain
playful and rebellious expression; slightly indecorous speech did not
displease her. This idol of the aristocracy was simple and jovial,
mingling in her conversation Gallic salt and Neapolitan gaiety. In
contrast with so many princesses who weary their companions and are
wearied by them, she amused herself and others. Entering a family
celebrated by its legendary catastrophes, she had lost nothing of the
playfulness which was the essence of her nature. The Tuileries, the
scene of such terrible dramas, did not inspire her as it did the
Duchess of Angouleme, with sad reflections. When she heard Mass in the
Chapel of the Chateau, she did not say to herself that here had
resounded the furies of the Convention. The grand apartments, the court
of the Carrousel, the garden, could not recall to her the terrible
scenes of the 20th of June and the 10th of August. When she entered the
Pavillon de Flore, she did not reflect that there had sat the Committee
of Public Safety. The Tuileries were, to her eyes, only the abode of
power and pleasure, an agreeable and beautiful dwelling that had
brought her only happiness, since there she had given birth to the
Child of Europe, the "Child of Miracle."

The Duchess of Berry thought that a palace should be neither a barracks
nor a convent nor a prison, and that even for a princess there is no
happiness without liberty. She loved to go out without an escort, to
take walks, to visit the shops, to go to the little theatres, to make
country parties. She was like a bird in a gilded cage, which often
escapes and returns with pleasure only because it has escaped. She was
neither worn out nor blasee; everything interested her, everything made
her gay; she saw only the good side of things. In her all was
young--mind, character, imagination, heart. Thus she knew none of those
vague disquietudes, that causeless melancholy, that unreasoned sadness,
from which suffer so many queens and so many princesses on the steps of
a throne.

Gracious and simple in her manners, modest in her bearing, more
inclined to laughter and smiles than to sobs and tears, satisfied with
her lot despite her widowhood, she felt happy in being a princess, in
being a mother, in being in France. Flattered by the homage addressed
to her on all sides, but without haughty pride in it, she protected art
and letters with out pedantry, rejuvenated the court, embellished the
city, spread animation wherever she was seen, and appeared to the
people like a seductive enchantress. Those who were at her receptions
found themselves not in the presence of a coldly and solemnly majestic
princess, but of an accomplished mistress of the house bent on making
her salon agreeable to her guests. There was in her nothing to abash,
and by her gracious aspect, her extreme affability, she knew how to put
those with whom she talked at their ease, while wholly preserving her
own rank. She was not only polite, she was engaging, always seeking to
say something flattering or kindly to those who had the honor to
approach her. If she visited a studio, she congratulated the artist; in
a shop she made many purchases and talked with the merchants with a
grace more charming to them, perhaps, than even her extreme liberality.
If she went to a theatre, she enjoyed herself like a child. The select
little fetes given by her always had a character of special originality
and gaiety.

The Dauphiness had a higher rank at court than Madame, because she was
married to the heir of the throne. But as she took much less interest
in social matters, she did not shine with so much eclat. The Duchess of
Berry was the queen of elegance. In all questions of adornment, toilet,
furniture, she set the fashion. A commission as "tradesman of Madame"
was the dream of all the merchants. Sometimes, on New Year's Day, her
purchases at the chief shops were announced in the Moniteur. There were
hardly any chroniques in the journals under the Restoration. A simple
"item" sufficed for an account of the most dazzling fetes. If the
customs of the newspapers had been under the reign of Charles X. what
they are now, the Duchess of Berry would have filled all the "society
notes," and the objective point of every "reporter," to use an American
expression, would have been the Pavillon de Marsan, the "Little
Chateau," as it was then called. There indeed shone in all their
splendor the stars of French and foreign nobility, the women who
possessed all sorts of aristocracy--of birth, of fortune, of wit, and
of beauty. This little circle of luxury and elegance excited less
jealousy and less criticism than did the intimate society of Marie
Antoinette in the last part of the old regime, because in the Queen's
time, to frequent the Petit Trianon was the road to honors, while under
Charles X. the intimates of the Pavillon de Marsan did not make their
social pleasures the stepping-stone to fortune.

The Duchess of Berry never meddled in politics. Doubtless her
sympathies, like those of the Dauphiness, were with the Right, but she
exercised no influence on the appointment of ministers and
functionaries. Charles X. never consulted her about public affairs; the
idea would never have occurred to the old King to ask counsel of so
young and inexperienced a woman.

It is but justice to the Princess to say that while wholly inclined
toward the Right, she had none of the exaggeration of the extremists in
either her ideas or her attitude, and that, repudiating the arrogance
and prejudices of the past, she never, in any way, dreamed of the
resurrection of the old regime. She was liked by the army, being known
as a good rider and a courageous Princess. When she talked with
officers she had the habit of saying things that went straight to their
hearts. There was no difference in her politeness to the men of the old
nobility or to the parvenus of victory. The former servitors of
Napoleon were grateful for her friendliness to them, and perhaps they
would always have respected the white flag--the flag of Henry IV., had
it been borne by the gracious hand of his worthy descendant. To sum up,
she was what would be called to-day a very "modern" Princess; her role
might well have been to share the ideas and aspirations of the new
France.

The Duchess of Berry led a very active life. When she came to France
she was in the habit of rising late. But her husband, who believed the
days to be shorter for princes than for other men, showed that he
disliked this, and after that the Princess would not remain in bed
after six o'clock, winter or summer. As soon as she was ready she
summoned her children, and for half an hour gave them her instructions.
On leaving them, she went to hear Mass, and then breakfasted. Next came
the walks, almost always with a useful object in view. Sometimes it was
a hospital to which Madame carried relief, some times an artist's
studio, a shop, an industrial establishment that she encouraged by her
purchases and her presence. On her return she busied herself with the
tenderest and most conscientious care in the education of the two
daughters whom her husband had left to her, and who have since become,
one the Baroness of Chorette, the other the Princess of Lucinge.
Audiences took up the remainder of the morning, sometimes lasting to
dinner time. When some one said to her one day that she must be very
tired of them, she replied: "During all that time I am told the truth,
and I find as much pleasure in hearing it as people of society do in
reading romances."

Madame was very charitable. She devoted to the poor an ordinary and an
extraordinary budget. The tenth of her revenue was always applied to
the relief of the unfortunate, and was deposited by twelfths, each
month, with her First Almoner. This tithe was distributed with as much
method as sagacity. A valet de chambre, each evening, brought to the
Princess the day's petitions for relief. Madame classified them with
her own hand in alphabetical order, and registered and numbered them.
Whatever the hour, she never adjourned this task to the morrow. The
private secretary then went over these petitions and presented an
analysis of them to the Princess, who indicated on the margin what she
wished to give. This was the ordinary budget of the poor, the tenth of
Madame's revenue. But she had, besides, an extraordinary budget of
charity for the unfortunate who were the more to be respected because
they concealed themselves in obscurity and awaited instead of seeking
help. It often happened that the Princess borrowed in order to give
more. The total of her revenues amounted to 1,730,000
francs,--1,500,000 francs from the Treasury, 100,000 francs in Naples
funds, coming from her dower, and 130,000 francs from her domain of
Rosny. Madame expended all in alms or in purchases intended to
encourage the arts and commerce.

The Duchess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry each had in the
environs of Paris a pleasure house, which was their Petit Trianon,
where they could lead a simpler life, less subject to the laws of
etiquette than in the royal Chateaux. That of the Dauphiness was
Villeneuve-l'Etang; and that of Madame, Rosny. The first had been
bought of Marshal Soult by the Duchess of Angouleme in 1821. When she
rode from Paris, this was always her destination. When she lived at
Saint Cloud, she often set out on foot in the early morning alone, and
followed across the park a little path known as the "road of the
Dauphiness," to a little gate of the Chateau of Villeneuve-l'Etang, of
which she carried the key.

Rosny is a chateau situated in the Department of Seine-et-Oise, seven
kilometres from Mantes, where Sully, the famous minister of Henry IV.,
was born, and which had been bought in 1818 by the Duke of Berry. It
was the favorite resort of Madame. She went there often and passed a
great part of the summer. There she lived the life of a simple private
person, receiving herself those who came to offer homage or request
aid. The village of Rosny profited by the liberality of the Chateau, La
Quotidienne said in an article reproduced by the Moniteur:--

"Since Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Berry has owned the estate of
Rosny, her sole occupation has been to secure the happiness of this
country. Every journey she makes is marked by some act of goodness.
Besides the Hospital of Saint-Charles, a monument of her beneficence
and piety, which is open to all the sick of the country, she sends out
relief to the homes of the needy every day. The houses that rise in the
village replace wretched huts, and give a more agreeable and cheerful
aspect to the place. The children of either sex, the object of her most
tender solicitude, are taught at her expense. At every journey Madame
honors them with a visit and encourages them with prizes which she
condescends to distribute herself."

In his Souvenirs Intimes the Count de Mesnard, First Equerry of the
Duchess of Berry, writes:--

"The King, Charles X., did not recognize in his daughter-in-law nearly
the solidity that she had. He believed her to be light-minded, and only
looked upon her as a great child, though he loved her much and her
gaiety pleased him beyond measure, being himself of a gay nature. You
may have heard that one day Madame rode in an omnibus. That is not
correct. But it is true that one day Her Royal Highness said to the
King:--

"'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."

The real chatelaine of this little court of Chantilly was a beautiful
Englishwoman, Sophie Dawes, married to a French officer, the Baron of
Feucheres. Born about 1795, in the Isle of Wight, Sophie Dawes was the
daughter of a fisherman. It is said that she was brought up by charity,
and played for some time at Covent Garden Theatre, London. But her
early life is unknown, and what is told of it is not trustworthy. In
1817, she was taken into the intimacy of the Duke of Bourbon, and
afterwards acquired an irresistible ascendancy over him. When she
became his inseparable companion, she explained her presence with him
by the story that she was his natural daughter, and the Duke avoided
confirming or denying this assertion. In 1818, he arranged a marriage
between his favorite and a very honorable officer, the Baron of
Feucheres, who believed, in good faith, that Sophie Dawes was really
the daughter of the Duke of Bourbon, and not his mistress. The marriage
was celebrated in England, but the pair returned to Chantilly. The
Baron of Feucheres figures in the royal Almanacs of 1821, 1822, 1823,
as lieutenant-colonel, gentleman in ordinary to the Duke of Bourbon,
Prince of Conde, but not in the Almanac of 1824.

In a very interesting work, the Vie de Charles X. by the Abbe de
Vedrenne, the reader will find:--

"By the marriage of Sophie Dawes, did the Duke of Bourbon wish to break
away from a guilty bond? It is generally believed. As to M. de
Feucheres, convinced that his wife was the daughter of the Prince, he
had no suspicion. It was Sophie Dawes herself who enlightened him, to
drive him away. The effect of the revelation was terrible. M. de
Feucheres, indignant, quitted his wife. There no longer remained about
the Prince any but the creatures of Madame de Feucheres. Every one did
her bidding at Chantilly, and the Prince most of all."

The favorite sought to palliate her false situation in the eyes of
society by doing good with the Prince's money. The Count of Puymaigre
relates that she many times took him to the Hospital of Chantilly,
endowed by the munificence of the great Conde, the revenues of which
she wished to increase. He adds: "I urged her to this good work as much
as I could; for good, by whatever hand done, endures."

One day the Duchess of Angouleme asked him if he went often to
Chantilly.

"I go there," replied the Prefect, "to pay my court to the Duke of
Bourbon, whom I have the honor of having in my department."

"That is very well," responded the Dauphiness, "but I hope that Madame
de Puymaigre does not go."

The grand passion of the Duke of Bourbon was hunting. The Prefect of
the Oise says:--

"It was particularly during the hunts of Saint-Hubert that Chantilly
was a charming abode. The start was made at seven o'clock in the
morning, and usually I was in the carriage of the Prince with the
everlasting Madame de Feucheres. The hunting-lodge was delightful and
in a most picturesque situation. There twenty or thirty persons met to
the sound of horns, in the midst of dogs, horses, and huntsmen. The
coursing train of the Prince was finer and more complete than that of
the King. A splendid breakfast was served at the place of rendezvous,
built and furnished in the Gothic style of the thirteenth century, and
there the chase began. Although I told the Prince that I was no hunter,
he often made me mount my horse and accompany him; but often having
enjoyed the really attractive spectacle of the stag, driven by a crowd
of dogs, which launched themselves after him across the waters of a
little lake, I hastened back to the Gothic pavilion where the ladies
and a few men remained."

The Prince said one day to the Prefect:--

"Decidedly, you do not love hunting."

"But I might love it, my lord, if I had such an outfit."

"That's because you don't know anything about it, my dear Puymaigre;
when I was in England, hunting all alone in the marshes with my dog
Belle, I enjoyed it much more than here."

The Prefect thus concludes his description of life at Chantilly:--

"Dinner was at six o'clock in the magnificent gallery where the
souvenirs of the great Conde were displayed in all their pomp, and the
eyes fell on fine pictures of the battles of Rocroy, Senef, Fribourg,
and Nordlingen, inspiring some regret for the life led by the heir of
so much glory. After dinner society comedy was played on a very pretty
stage, where the luxury of costumes was very great and the
mise-en-scene carefully attended to; and this did not make the actors
any better, although the little plays were tolerable. But Madame de
Feucheres wishing to play Alzire and to take the principal part, which
she doled out with sad monotony, without change of intonation from the
first line to the last, and with a strongly pronounced English accent,
it was utterly ridiculous, and Voltaire would have flown into a fine
passion had he seen one of his chefs-d'oeuvres mangled in that way. Who
could have told that this poor Prince, who, if he had neither the
virtues nor the dignity proper to his rank, was nevertheless a very
good fellow, would perish in 1830, in such a tragic manner?"

Charles X. had a long standing affection for the Duke of Bourbon. On
September 21st, 1824, he conferred on him at the same time as on the
Duke of Orleans, the title of Royal Highness. The last of the Condes
was, besides, Grand Master of France. This court function was honorary
rather than real, and the Prince appeared at the Tuileries only on rare
occasions. Charles X. loved him as a friend of his childhood, a
companion of youth and exile, but he had a lively regret to see him
entangled in such relations with the Baroness of Feucheres. The advice
he gave him many times to induce him to break this liaison was without
result. Finally the King said: "Let us leave him alone; we only give
him pain." He never went to Chantilly, in order not to sanction by his
royal presence the kind of existence led there by his old relation; and
the Prince knowing the sentiments of his sovereign, gave him but few
invitations, which were always evaded under one pretext or another.

People wondered at the time who would be the heirs of the immense
fortune of the Condes, whose race was on the point of extinction. The
Prince's mother was Charlotte-Elisabeth de Rohan-Soubise, and the
Rohans thought themselves the natural heirs. But such a combination
would not have met the views of Madame de Feucheres, who, not content
with having got from the Prince very considerable donations, counted on
figuring largely in his will.

Nevertheless she was not without lively anxiety in that regard. The
Rohans had refused all compromise with her. If they were disinherited,
what would they say? Would they not attack the will on the ground of
undue influence? Such was the eventuality against which the prudent
Baroness intended to guard herself. In consequence she conceived the
bold project of sheltering her own wealth under the patronage of some
member of the royal family, in having him receive the fortune of the
old Prince under a will which at the same time should consecrate the
part to be received by her, and put it beyond all contest. She would
have wished the old Prince to choose his heir in the elder branch of
the House of Bourbon. But the Duchess of Berry, who was
disinterestedness itself, declined any arrangement of that nature. To
the insinuations made to her in favor of her son, she responded:--

"Henri will be King. The King of France needs nothing."

She did more. It is said that to the persons who bore these advances to
her, she suggested the idea of having the heritage of the Condes pass
to the family of the Duke of Orleans. But the thing was not easy. It is
true that the children of the Duke were, by their mother, Bathilde
d'Orleans, nephews of the wife of the Duke of Bourbon. But this Prince
had led a bad life with his wife, from whom he had separated
immediately after the birth of the Duke d'Enghien, and the souvenirs of
the Revolution separated him widely from a family whose political ideas
were not his. Yet the Duke and Duchess of Orleans were not discouraged.
They entered on negotiations a long time in advance with the Baroness
of Feucheres, who was in reality the arbiter of the situation. M.
Nettement relates that the first time that Marie-Amelie pronounced the
name of the Baroness in the presence of the Duchess of Angouleme, the
daughter of Louis XVI. said to her: "What! you have seen that woman!"
The Duchess of Orleans responded: "What would you have? I am a mother.
I have a numerous family; I must think before all of the interests of
my children."

What is certain is that the Prince was induced to be the godfather of
the Duke d'Aumale, born the 6th of January, 1822, and that was a sort
of prelude to the will of 1830.




X

THE COURT


Now let us throw a general glance over the court of the King, Charles
X., in 1825, the year of the consecration.

The civil household of the King comprised six distinct services: those
of Grand Almoner of France, of the Grand Master of France, of the Grand
Chamberlain of France, of the Grand Equerry of France, of the Grand
Huntsman of France, and of the Grand Master of Ceremonies of France.

The Grand Almoner was the Cardinal, Prince of Croy, Archbishop of
Rowen; the First Almoner, Mgr. Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis; the
confessor of the King, the Abbe Jocard. Charles X., this monarch,
surrounded by great lords, knelt before a plebeian priest and demanded
absolution for his sins. There were, besides, in the service of the
Grand Almoner of France, eight almoners, eight chaplains, and eight
pupils of the chapel, serving in turns of four.

The function of the Grand Master of France had as titulary the Duke of
Bourbon, Prince of Conde. But this Prince performed his duties only in
very rare and solemn circumstances. In fact, the service of the Grand
Master of France was directed by the First Steward, the Count of
Cosse-Brissac. There were besides four chamberlains of the House, the
Count de Rothe, the Marquis of Mondragon, the Count Mesnard de Chousy,
the Viscount Hocquart, and several stewards.

The Grand Chamberlain of France was the Prince de Talleyrand. He
discharged his functions only on solemn occasions, such as the funeral
of Louis XVIII. and the consecration of Charles X. and the arrival of
the Duchess of Berry. In fact, the service of the Grand Chamberlain of
France was directed by one of the first gentlemen of the chamber. They
were four in number,--the Duke d'Aumont, the Duke of Duras, the Duke of
Blacas, the Duke Charles de Damas,--and performed their functions in
turn a year each. Every four years the King designated those who were
to serve during each of the following four years. Thus, the Royal
Almanac of 1825 has this notice:--

First gentlemen of the chamber: 1825, the Duke d'Aumont; 1826, the Duke
of Duras; 1827, the Duke of Blacas; 1828, Count de Damas (afterwards
Duke).

The first chamberlains, masters of the wardrobe, were five in number:
the Marquis de Boisgelin, the Count de Pradel, the Count Curial, the
Marquis d'Avaray, the Duke d'Avaray. There were besides thirty-two
gentlemen of the chamber, without counting those that were honorary. To
this same service belonged the readers, the first valets-de-chambre,
the ushers of the chamber, the musicians of the chamber, those of the
chapel and the service of the faculty. The entrees, a matter so
important in the ceremonies of courts, were also attached to this
service.

By virtue of royal regulations of November 1st, December 31st, 1820,
and January 23d, 1821, the entrees at the Chateau of the Tuileries were
established as follows: They were divided in six classes: the grand
entrees, the first entrees of the Cabinet, the entrees of the Cabinet,
those of the Hall of the Throne, those of the first salon preceding the
Hall of the Throne, and last, those of the second salon.

The grand entrees gave the privilege of entering at any time the
sleeping-room of the King. They belonged to the Grand Chamberlain, to
the first chamberlains--masters of the wardrobe. Next came the first
entrees of the Cabinet (this was the name of the hall which, during the
reign of Napoleon III., was designated as the Salon de Louis XIV.,
because it contained a Gobelins tapestry representing the Ambassadors
of Spain received by the King). Persons who have the first entrees of
the Cabinet have the right to enter there at any time in order to have
themselves announced to the King, and there to await permission to
enter the main apartment. These first entrees of the Cabinet belong to
those who have to take the orders of the sovereign--to the grand
officers of his civil and military households, or, in their absence, to
the first officer of each service, to the major-general of the royal
guard on service, to the Grand Chancellor, to the minister-secretaries
of State, to the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor, to the
captains of the King's bodyguard, to the Grand Quartermaster.

Next come the entrees of the Cabinet (which must not be confused with
the first entrees of the Cabinet). These give to persons enjoying them
the right to enter that room usually a little before the hour fixed by
the King to hear Mass, and to remain there at will during the day, up
to the hour of the evening when the sovereign gives out the watchword.
They belong to the grand officers and to the first officers of the
civil and military households of the King, to the major-generals of the
royal guard and the lieutenant-general in service, to the cardinals, to
the Chancellor of France, to the minister-secretaries of State, to the
Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor, to the marshals of France, to
the Grand Referendary of the Chamber of Peers, to the President of the
Chamber of Deputies, and to all the officers of the King's household on
service.

The persons and functionaries civil or military with a lower rank in
the hierarchy of the court have their entrees, some to the Hall of the
Throne, others to the first salon preceding the Hall of the Throne (the
Salon d'Apollon under Napoleon III.), and still others to the second
salon (communicating with the Hall of the Marshals, and called, under
Napoleon III., the Salon of the First Consul).

The collective audience given to all having their entries was called
the public audience of the King. It took place when the King went to
hear Mass in his chapel, only on his return to re-enter his inner
apartment. Followed by all his grand officers and his first officers in
service, Charles X. passed to and paused in each of the rooms in his
outer apartment, in order to allow those having the right to be there
to pay their court to him. When he attended Mass in his inner
apartment, he gave a public audience only after that ceremony. He
paused in his Grand Cabinet, then in the Hall of the Throne, and
successively in the other rooms.

When the King was ready to receive, the First Gentleman of the Chamber
gave notice to the grand officers and the first officers that they
might present themselves. Moreover, he placed before the King the list
of persons having entrees to his apartments or to whom he had accorded
them. On this list Charles X. indicated those he wished invited.

There was no titular Grand Equerry of France. The First Equerry,
charged with the saddle-horses of the King, was the Duke of Polignac,
major-general. The two equerries-commandant were the Marquis of Vernon
and Count O'Hegerthy, major-general. There were, besides, four
equerries, masters of the horse, three each quarter, namely: for the
January quarter the Chevalier de Riviere, major-general; the Count
Defrance, lieutenant-general; the Baron Dujon, major-general;--for the
April quarter, the Colonel Viscount de Bongars; the Baron Vincent,
major-general; the Viscount Domon, lieutenant--general;--for the July
quarter, the Colonel Marquis de Martel, the Viscount Vansay, the Count
Frederic de Bongars;--for the October quarter, the Count de Fezensac,
major-general; the Colonel Marquis Oudinot, the Colonel Marquis de
Chabannes. The chief Equerries of the stable were the Viscount d'Abzac
and the Chevalier d'Abzac, both colonels. There were, besides, the
equerries in ordinary and the pupil-equerries. The pages belonged to
the service of the Grand Equerry of France.

The Grand Huntsman was the Marshal Marquis of Lauriston, and the First
Huntsman, the Lieutenant-General Count de Girardin. There were also
huntsmen for the hunting-courses and huntsmen for the gunning-hunts of
the King.

The Grand Master of Ceremonies was the Marquis of Dreux-Breze, and the
Master of Ceremonies the Marquis of Rochemore, major-general. There
were, besides, the aides, a king-at-arms and heralds-at-arms.

All the civil household of the King worked with the greatest
regularity. Etiquette, carefully observed, though stripped of the
ancient minutiae, recalled the old usages of the French monarchy. All
that had been suppressed was what was puerile and weariness for the
courtiers and for the King himself.

The military household of the King was a group of chosen troops. The
horse body-guards comprised five companies, each bearing the name of
its chief. The Duke d'Havre et de Croy, the Duke of Gramont, the Prince
of Poix, Duke de Mouchy, the Duke of Luxembourg, the Marquis de
Riviere. The chiefs of these companies, all five lieutenants-general,
were entitled captains of the guard. There was, besides, a company of
foot-guards in ordinary to the King, whose chief, the Duke of
Mortemart, major-general, had the title of captain-colonel, and whose
officers were some French, some Swiss. There was a Chief Quartermaster,
the Lieutenant-General Marquis de La Suze.

The royal guard, composed of two divisions of infantry, two divisions
of cavalry, and a regiment of artillery, was under the command of four
marshals of France, Victor, Duke de Bellune; Macdonald, Duke de
Tarente; Oudinot, Duke de Reggio; Marmont, Duke de Raguse, all four of
whom had the title of major-general.

The body-guards, the Swiss, the royal guard, were the admiration of all
connoisseurs. The Emperor Napoleon never had had troops better
disciplined, of better bearing, clad in finer uniforms, animated by a
better spirit.

To the household of the King must be added those of the Dauphin, the
Dauphiness, and the Duchess of Berry. The Dauphin had as first
gentlemen, the Duke of Damas and the Duke of Guiche, both
lieutenants-general; for gentlemen, the Count d'Escars and the Baron of
Damas, lieutenants-general; the Count Melchior de Polignac,
major-general; the Viscount de Saint Priest, and the Count de
Bordesoulle, lieutenants-general; the Count d'Osmond,
lieutenant-colonel. For aides-de-camp, the Baron de Beurnonville and
the Count de Laroche-Fontenille, major-generals; the Viscount of
Champagny, the Count of Montcalm, and the Baron Lecouteulx de Canteleu,
colonels; the Viscount de Lahitte, and the Duke de Ventadour,
lieutenant-colonels; the Count de La Rochefoucauld, chief of battalion.

The household of the Dauphiness was composed as follows: a First
Almoner, the Cardinal de La Fare, Archbishop of Sens, with two almoners
serving semiannually, and a chaplain; a lady-of-honor, the Duchess of
Damas-Cruz; a lady of the bed chamber, the Viscountess d'Agoult; seven
lady companions, the Countess of Bearn, the Marchioness of Biron, the
Marchioness of Sainte-Maure, the Viscountess of Vaudreuil, the Countess
of Goyon, the Marchioness de Rouge, the Countess of Villefranche; two
gentlemen-in-waiting, the Marquis of Vibraye and the Duke Mathieu de
Montmorency, major-general; a First Equerry, the Viscount d'Agoult,
lieutenant-general, and two equerries, the Chevalier de Beaune and M.
O'Hegerthy.

We shall devote a special chapter to the household of the Duchess of
Berry.

The Count Alexandre de Puymaigre has left in his Souvenirs an account
of the manner in which the court employed the two weeks passed at
Compiegne in the month of October of each year. At 8 A.M., the King
heard Mass, where attendance was very exact except when the King
omitted to come, when no one came. At nine o'clock they set out for the
hunt, almost always with guns. One hundred to one hundred and fifty
hussars or chasseurs of the guard in garrison at Compiegne beat the
field, marching in line of battle, with the King in the middle: he had
at his right the Dauphin, at his left a captain of the guards, or such
person of the court as he was pleased to designate. These were the
three who alone had the right to fire.

Behind the sovereign, apart from some persons connected with the
service of the hunt, came a master of the horse, the first huntsman,
and some persons admitted to the hunt. The King, who used a flintlock
gun, was a very good marksman. About five or six in the evening he
returned to the Chateau. The people of the court were gathered on the
steps, awaiting him. He usually addressed some affable words to them,
and then went to dress in order to be in the salon at seven o'clock.

The captain of the guards, the first gentleman, the first huntsman, the
ladies and gentlemen in waiting of the princesses, the masters of the
horse, the colonel of the guard, dined with the King. The dinner was
choice, without being too sumptuous, but the wines were not of the
first order. The company remained at the table an hour, and each talked
freely with his or her neighbor, except those by the side of the
Dauphin or a Princess. There was music during the repast, and the
public was admitted to circulate about the table. The royal family
liked the attendance of spectators to be considerable. Thus care was
taken to give out a number of cards, in order that the promenade about
the table during the second service should be continuous. Often the
princesses spoke to the women of their acquaintance and gave candy to
the children passing behind them.

After the coffee, which was taken at table, Charles X. and his guests
traversed the Gallery of Mirrors, leading to the salon between two
lines of spectators eager to see the royal family. The King next played
billiards while a game of ecarte was started. The agents for the
preservation of the forests and the pages of the hunt remained by the
door, inside, without being permitted to advance into the salon, which
was occupied only by persons who had dined with the King.

After having had his game of billiards and left his place for other
players, Charles X. took a hand at whist, while the ecarte went on
steadily until, toward ten o'clock, the King retired. He was followed
to his sleeping-room, where he gave the watchword to the captain of the
body-guards, and indicated the hour of the meet for the next day.

"Sometimes we then returned to the salon," adds the Count of Puymaigre,
who, in virtue of his office as Prefect of the Oise, dined with the
King, as well as the Bishop of Beauvais and the general commanding the
sub-division. "M. de Cosse-Brisac, the first steward, had punch served,
and we continued the ecarte till midnight or one o'clock, when we could
play more liberally, the Dauphiness having limited the stakes to five
francs. The Duchess of Berry was less scrupulous. After the withdrawal
of the princes we were glad to be more at ease; the talk became gay and
even licentious, and I will say here that all the men of the court whom
I have seen near the King, far from being what could be called devout
or hypocritical, as was believed in the provinces, were anything but
that; that they no more concealed their indifference in religious
matters than they did their diversity of political opinions, royalist
doubtless, but of divers grades; that no one was more tolerant than the
King; finally, that if an occult power, the existence of which I do not
deny, but the force of which has been exaggerated, acted on the mind of
the King, it had not its seat in what was called the court."

Charles X. was deeply religious, a fervent believer, sincerely
Christian, and this Prince who but for his great piety might perhaps
have given excuse for scandal, led a life without reproach. But as
indulgent for others as he was severe to himself, he forced no one to
imitate his virtues, and his palaces were in no way like convents. As
was said by the Duke Ambroise de Doudeauville, for three years the
minister of the King's household, "his religion, despite all the stupid
things said of it, was very frank, very real, and very well understood."

Rarely has a sovereign given such a good example to those about him. No
mistresses, no favorites, no scandal, no ruinous expenditures, no
excess of luxury; a gentle piety, extreme affability, perfect courtesy,
a constant desire to render France happy and glorious. The appearance
of Charles X. was that of a fine old man, gracious, healthy, amiable,
and respected. Persons of plebeian origin at his court were treated by
him with as much politeness and attention as the chiefs of the ancient
houses of France. His manners were essentially aristocratic, but
without arrogance or pretension. Full of goodness toward his courtiers
and his servitors, he won the love of all who approached him. His
tastes were simple, and personally he required no luxury. Habituated
during the Emigration to go without many things, he never thought of
lavish expenditure, of building palaces or furnishing his residences
richly. "Never did a king so love his people," says the Duke Ambroise
de Doudeauville, "never did a king carry self-abnegation so far. I
urged him one day to allow his sleeping-room to be furnished. He
refused. I insisted, telling him that it was in a shocking condition of
neglect.

"'If it is for me,' he replied with vivacity, 'no; if it is for the
sake of the manufactures, yes.'

"It was the same in everything. He had no whims and never listened to a
proposition by which he alone was to profit. He joined to these
essential qualities, manners that were wholly French, and mots that
often recalled Henry IV. We were always saying to each other, my
colleagues and I, 'If a king were made to order for France, he would
not be different.' What a misfortune for France, which he loved so
much, that he was not known better and more appreciated. This portrait,
I protest, is in nowise flattering; if this poor Prince were still
reigning, I would not say so much of him, above all in his presence;
but he is persecuted and is an exile; I owe my country the truth,
nothing but the truth."

Let us add to the honor of Charles X. that he made of his personal
fortune and his civil list the noblest and most liberal use.

"On the throne," says the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld," he
was generous to excess. In his noble improvidence of the future, he
considered his civil list as a sort of loan, made by the nation for the
sake of its grandeur, to be returned in luxury, magnificence, and
benefits. A faithful depositary, he made it a duty to use it all, so
that, stripped of his property, he carried into exile hardly enough for
the support of his family and some old servitors."

To sum up, all who figured at the court of Charles X. agree in
recognizing that he was not a superior man, but a prince, chivalrous
and sympathetic, honest and of good intentions, who committed grave
errors, but did not deserve his misfortunes. In his appearance, in his
physiognomy, in thought and language, there was a mingling of grace and
dignity of which even his adversaries felt the charm. If posterity is
severe for the sovereign, it will be indulgent for the man.




XI

THE DUKE OF DOUDEAUVILLE


At the time of the consecration of Charles X., the minister of the
King's household was the Duke Ambroise de Doudeauville, father of the
Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld. A philanthropic nobleman,
devoted to the throne, the altar, the Charter, and to liberty,
respectful for the past but thoughtful for the future, joining
intelligent toleration to sincere piety, faithful servitor but no
courtier to the King, the Duke of Doudeauville enjoyed the esteem of
all and had at court a high standing, due even more to his character
than to his birth. The volume of Memoirs that he has left does honor to
his heart as well as to his mind. There is grace and gaiety, depth and
charm, wisdom and courage, in this short but substantial book, where
appears in full light one of the most distinct types of the ancient
French society. "My years of grandeur and splendor," this author wrote,
"have passed like a dream, and I have beheld the awakening with
pleasure. I know not what my destiny shall be. As to my conduct, I
believe that I can affirm that it will be always that of an honest man,
a good Frenchman, a servant of God, desiring a Christian close to an
honorable life, the crown of every human edifice."

The details given by the Duke of Doudeauville as to his early years are
very characteristic. He was born in 1765. He was entrusted to the care
of a nurse living two leagues from Paris in a little village, the wife
of a post-rider. His parents, when they came to see him, found "their
eighteen-months-old progeny astride of one of the horses of his
foster-father." Like Henry IV., he was raised roughly, leading the life
of a real peasant, running the day long, in sabots, through the snow
and ice and mud. "My nurse, who was retained as maid," he says, "was a
good peasant, and thoroughly proletarian. Afterwards, transferred to
the capital, she there preserved with her simple cap her frank and
rustic manners, to the admiration of all who knew her, and esteemed her
loyal character and her plain ways. It is to her, and to her alone,
that I am indebted for receiving any religious instruction either in
infancy or youth. Everything about me was wholly foreign to those
ideas; my religion was none the less fervent for that. From my earliest
years, being born brave, I felt the vocation of the martyr the most
desirable means of being joined to our Father which is in Heaven, and I
have always thought that to end one's days for one's God, one's wife
and family, was a touching and enviable death."

The Duke of Doudeauville was still a child, and a little child--in
point of age he was fourteen and a day, in size he was four feet seven
inches--when he was married. He espoused Mademoiselle de Montmirail, of
the family of Louvois, who brought him, with a beauty he did not then
prize, a considerable fortune, the rank of grandee of Spain, and, worth
more than all, rare and precious qualities. Nevertheless, the little
husband was very sad. When his approaching marriage was announced to
him, he cried out, "Then I can play no longer!" When, after the first
interview, he was asked how he liked his fiancee, whose fresh face,
oval and full, was charming, he responded: "She is really very
beautiful; she looks like me when I am eating plums." Listen to his
story of the nuptials. "Imagine my extreme embarrassment," he says, "my
stupid disappointment, with my excessive bashfulness amid the numerous
concourse of visitors and spectators attracted by our wedding. The
grandfather of Mademoiselle de Montmirail, being captain of the
Hundred-Swiss, a great part of this corps was there, and, as if to play
me a trick, all these Hundred-Swiss were six feet tall, sometimes more.
One would have said, seeing me by the side of them, the giants and the
dwarf of the fair. Every one gazed at the bride, who, although she was
only fifteen, was as tall as she was beautiful, and every one was
looking for the bridegroom, without suspecting that it was this child,
this schoolboy, who was to play the part."

Is it not amusing, this picture of a marriage under the old regime? The
little groom was so disturbed when he went to the chapel and during the
ceremony, that, though his memory was excellent, he never could recall
what passed at that time. "I only remember," he says, "the sound of the
drums that were beating during our passage, and cheered me a little; it
was the one moment of the day that was to my taste. How long that day
seemed! You may imagine it was not from the motives common in like
cases, but because I drew all glances upon me, and all vied in laughing
at and joking me, pointing their fingers at me."

The day ended with a grand repast that lasted two or three hours. A
crowd of strangers strolled around the table all the while. Although
the precaution had been taken to put an enormous cushion on the chair
of the husband, his chin hardly came above the table. Seated by the
side of his young wife, he did not dare look at her. For days
beforehand he had been wondering if he should always be afraid of her.

"After this solemn banquet," he adds, "came the soiree, which did not
seem any more amusing; after the soiree the return to my parents' home
was no more diverting; nevertheless, it was made in the company of my
dear spouse, who henceforth was to dwell at my father's house. They
bundled me into a wretched cabriolet with my preceptor, and sent me to
finish my education at Versailles, and to learn to ride at the
riding-school of the pages."

We must note that the marriage thus begun was afterwards a very happy
union, and that there was never a pair more virtuous and more attached
to each other than the Duke and Duchess of Doudeauville.

In 1789, the Duke was major of the Second Regiment of Chasseurs. He
emigrated, though the Emigration was not at all to his liking. "This
measure," he said, "appeared to me in every way unreasonable, and yet,
to my great chagrin, I was forced to submit to it. The person of the
King was menaced, right-thinking people compromised, the tranquillity
and prosperity of France lost; they were arming abroad, it was said, to
provide a remedy for these evils. The nobles hastened hither. Distaffs
were sent to all who refused to rally on the banks of the Rhine. How,
at twenty-five, could one resist this tide of opinion?" When he
perceived, in the foreign powers, the design of profiting by the
discords in France instead of putting an end to them, he laid aside his
arms, and never resumed them during the eight years of the Emigration.
"This resolve," he said, "was consistent with my principles. Always a
good Frenchman, I desired only the good of my country, the happiness of
my fellow-countrymen; my whole life, I hope, has been a proof of this
view. All my actions have tended to this end."

During his eight years of emigration, the Duke of Doudeauville was
constantly a prey to anxiety, grief, poverty, trials of every kind.
Thirteen of his relatives were put to death under the Terror. His wife
was imprisoned, and escaped the scaffold only through the 9th
Thermidor. He himself, having visited France clandestinely several
times, ran the greatest risks. In the midst of such sufferings his sole
support was the assistance of a devoted servant. "At the moment that I
write these lines," he says in his Memoirs, "I am about to lose my
domestic Raphael, the excellent man who, for fifty years, has given me
such proofs of fidelity, disinterestedness, and delicacy; I have
treated him as a friend; I shall grieve for him as for a brother."

Misfortune had fortified the character of the Duke of Doudeauville.
Unlike other emigres, he had learned much and forgotten nothing. His
attitude under the Consulate and the Empire was that of a true
patriot.--Without joining the Opposition, he wished no favor. The sole
function he accepted was that of councillor-general of the Department
of the Marne, where he could be useful to his fellow-citizens without
giving any one the right to accuse him of ambitious motives. Nothing
would have been easier for him than to be named to one of the high
posts in the court of Napoleon, whose defects he disapproved, but whose
great qualities he admired. "Bonaparte," he said in his Memoirs, "had
monarchical ideas and made much of the nobility, especially that which
he called historic. I must confess, whatever may be said, that the
latter under his reign was more esteemed, respected, feted, than it has
been since under Louis XVIII. or Charles X. The princes feared to
excite toward it and toward themselves the envy of the bourgeois
classes, who would have no supremacy but their own. Napoleon, on the
contrary, having frankly faced the difficulty, created a nobility of
his own. Those who belonged to it, or hoped to, found it quite
reasonable that they should be given as peers the descendants of the
first houses of France." The Duchess of Doudeauville was a sister of
the Countess of Montesquiou, who was governess of the King of Rome, and
whose husband had replaced the Prince de Talleyrand as Grand
Chamberlain of the Emperor. Very intimate with the Count and Countess,
the Duke of Doudeauville had some trouble in avoiding the favors of
Napoleon, who held him in high esteem. He found a way to decline them
without wounding the susceptibilities of the powerful sovereign.

Under the Restoration, the Duke of Doudeauville distinguished himself
by an honest liberalism, loyal and intelligent, with nothing
revolutionary in it, and by an enlightened philanthropy that won him
the respect of all parties. When he was named as director of the
post-office in 1822, many people of his circle blamed him for taking a
place beneath him. "Congratulate me," he said, laughing, "that I have
not been offered that of postman; I should have taken it just the same
if I had thought I could be useful." And he added: "It was thought that
it would be a sinecure for me. Far from that, I gave myself up wholly
to my new employment, and I worked so hard at it, than in less than a
year my eyes, previously excellent, were almost ruined. I always
occupied fifteen or twenty places, each more gratuitous than the
others. To make the religion that I practise beloved and to serve my
neighbor, has always seemed to me the best way to serve God. So I
believe that I can say without fear of contradiction that I have never
done any one harm, and that I have always tried to do all the good
possible."

In the month of August, 1824, the Duke of Doudeauville was named
minister of the King's household. In this post he showed administrative
qualities of a high order. In April, 1827, not wishing to share in a
measure that he regarded as both inappropriate and unpopular, the
disbanding of the Parisian National Guard, he gave in his resignation.
"I did not wish," he said, "to join the Opposition. The popularity
given me by my resignation would have assured me a prominent place, but
this role agreed neither with my character nor with my antecedents. I
resolved on absolute silence and complete obscurity; I even avoided
showing myself in Paris, where I knew that manifestations of
satisfaction and gratitude would be given to me." King Louis Philippe
said one day to Marshal Gerard: "Had they listened to the Duke of
Doudeauville, and not broken up the National Guard of Paris, the
revolution would not have taken place."

The great lord, good citizen, and good Christian, who, at periods most
disturbed by changes of regime, had always been as firm in the
application of his principles as he was moderate in his actions and
gentle in his method, made himself as much respected under Louis
Philippe as under the Restoration. During the cholera, he set the
example of absolute devotion and was constantly in the hospitals. He
continued to sit in the Chamber of Peers until the close of the trial
of the Ministers, in the hope of saving the servitors of Charles X. But
when Louis Philippe quitted the Palais Royal to install himself at the
Tuileries, he resigned as Peer of France. He no longer wished to
reappear at the Chateau where he had seen Louis XVIII. and Charles X.,
and in a letter to the Queen Marie-Amelie, who had a real veneration
for him, he wrote: "My presence at the Tuileries would be out of place,
and even the new hosts of that palace would be astonished at it." The
Duke of Doudeauville, who died at a great age, in 1841, devoted his
last years to good works, to charity, to the benevolent establishments
of which he was the president. One day at the Hotel de Ville, he drew
applause from an assembly far from religious, by the words we are about
to cite, because they discovered in them his whole mind and heart: "A
husband would like a wife reserved, economical, a good housekeeper, an
excellent mother for his family, charming, eager to please him--him
only, adorning herself with virtue, the one ornament that is never
ruinous, having great gentleness for him, great strength as against all
others; he would wish, in fine, a perfect wife. I should like to
believe that there are many such, especially among my listeners, but I
should think it a miracle if one of them united all these qualities
without having the principles of religion. A woman, pretty, witty,
agreeable, would like her husband to think she was so, that he should
be as amiable for her, or almost, as for those he saw for the first
time; that he should not keep his ill humor and his brusqueness for his
home and lavish his care and attention on society; that he should
forget sometimes that he is a master,--in some ways a despotic
master,--despite the liberalism of the century and the progress of
philosophy; that he should be willing to be a friend, even if he ceased
to be a lover; finally, that he should not seek from others what he
will more surely find at home. Let this tender wife invoke religion,
let her cause her husband to love it, let her win him to it; she will
get what she hopes for and thank me for the recipe."

Our lady readers will thank us, we hope, for having spoken of a man who
gives them such good advice; and it is with pleasure that we have taken
the occasion to render homage to the memory of a great lord, who doubly
deserved the title, by the elevation of his ideas and the nobility of
his sentiments. Such men--alas! they are rare--would have saved the
Restoration if the Restoration could have been saved.




XII

THE HOUSEHOLD OF THE DUCHESS OF BERRY


We shall now, commencing with the ladies, throw a rapid glance over the
persons who, at the time of the consecration, formed the household of
the Duchess of Berry. The Princess had one lady of honor, one lady of
the bedchamber, and eleven lady companions, of whom three were
honorary. All were distinguished as much by their manners and
sentiments as by birth and education.

The lady of honor was the Marechale Oudinot, Duchess of Reggio, a lady
of the highest rank, who joined a large heart to a firm mind. Attached,
through her family, to the religious and monarchical principles of the
old regime, by her marriage to the glories of the imperial epic, she
represented at the court the ideas of pacification and fusion that
inspired the policy of Louis XVIII. Born in 1791, of Antoine de Coucy,
captain in the regiment of Artois, and of Gabrielle de Mersuay, she was
but two years old when her father and mother were thrown into the
dungeons of the Terror. Carried in the arms of a faithful
serving-woman, she visited the two prisoners, who escaped death. She
married one of Napoleon's most illustrious companions in arms, the
"modern Bayard," as he was called, the Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio,
who had received thirty-two wounds on the field of battle, and who, by
securing the passage of Beresina, deserved to be called the "saviour of
the army." He was wounded at the close of the Russian campaign. Then
his young wife crossed all Europe to go and care for him and saved him.
She was but twenty. She was only twenty-four when Louis XVIII. named
her lady of honor to the Duchess of Berry. Despite her extreme youth,
she filled her delicate functions with exquisite tact and precocious
wisdom, and from the first exercised a happy influence over the mind of
the Princess, who gladly listened to her counsels. Very active in work,
the lady of honor busied herself with untiring zeal with the details of
her charge. She was the directress, the secretary, the factotum, of the
Duchess of Berry. The Abbe Tripied, who pronounced her funeral eulogy
at Bar-le-Duc, May 21st, 1868, traced a very lifelike portrait of her.
Let us hear the ecclesiastic witness of the high virtues of this truly
superior woman.

"She bore," he said, "with equal force and sagacity her titles of lady
of honor and Duchess of Reggio. Proud of her blason, where were crossed
the arms of the old and of the new nobility, and where she saw, as did
the King, a sign, as it were, of reconciliation and peace, she bore it
high and firm, and defended it in its new glories, against insulting
attacks. An ornament to the court, by her graces and her high
distinction, she displayed there, for the cause of the good, all the
resources of her mind and the riches of her heart. But none of the
seductions and agitations she met there disturbed the limpidity of her
pure soul. Malignity, itself at bay, was forced to recognize and avow
that in the Duchess of Reggio no other stain could be found than the
ink-stains she sometimes allowed her pen to make upon her finger. In
her greatness, this noble woman saw, before all, the side of duty."

In 1832, when the Duchess of Berry was imprisoned in the citadel of
Blaye, her former lady of honor asked, without being able to obtain
that favor, the privilege of sharing her captivity. The Duchess of
Reggio to the last set an example of devotion and of all the virtues.
She was so gracious and affable that one day some one remarked: "When
the Duchess gives you advice, it seems as if she were asking a service
of you." When the noble lady died, April 18th, 1868, at Bar-le-Duc,
where her good works and her intelligent charity had made her beloved,
they wished to give her name to one of the streets of the city, and as
they already had the Rue Oudinot and the Place Reggio, one of the
streets was called the Rue de La Marechale.

The lady of the bedchamber of the Duchess of Berry and her lady
companions all belonged to the old aristocracy. The Countess of
Noailles, lady of the bedchamber, a woman full of intelligence, and
very beautiful, a mother worthy of all praise, was the daughter of the
Duke de Talleyrand, the niece of the Prince de Talleyrand, the wife of
Count Just de Noailles, second son of the Prince of Poix.

The Duchess of Berry had eight lady companions: the Countess of
Bouille, the Countess d'Hautefort, the Marchioness of Bethisy, the
Marchioness of Gourgues, the Countess of Casteja, the Countess of
Rosanbo, the Marchioness of Podenas; and three whose title was
honorary, the Marchioness of Lauriston, the Countess Charles de
Gontaut, and the Countess de La Rochejaquelein.

The Countess of Bouille, who at the time of the coronation of Charles
X. was about forty years old, was a creole, very agreeable and much
respected.

The Countess d'Hautefort, nee Maille-Latour-Landry, forty-one years
old, married to a colonel who belonged to the fourth company of the
bodyguards, was a woman of much intelligence, charmingly natural, and
an excellent musician. She shared in 1832 the captivity of the Duchess
of Berry.

Very distinguished in manner and sentiment as in birth, the Marchioness
Charles de Bethisy, married to a lieutenant-general and peer of France;
the Countess of Gourgues, nee Montboissier, married to a master of
requests, a deputy; the Countess of Mefflay, a young and charming
woman, daughter of the Countess of Latour, whom the Duchess of Berry
had as governess in the Two Sicilies, and wife of the Count Meffray,
receiver-general of Gers; the Viscountess of Casteja, daughter of the
Marquis of Bombelles, major-general, ambassador of Louis XVI. at Lisbon
and Vienna, then priest, Canon of Breslau, Bishop of Amiens, First
Almoner of the Duchess of Berry (he died in 1822, and one of his sons,
Charles de Bombelles, married morganatically the Empress Marie-Louise,
in 1833); the Countess of Rosanbo, daughter of the Count of Mesnard;
the Marchioness of Podenas, wife of a lieutenant-colonel; the
Marchioness of Lauriston, wife of the marshal, formerly lady of the
palace to the Empress Josephine and the Empress Marie-Louise; the
Countess Charles de Gontaut, whose husband was chamberlain of the
Emperor, a very young and very pretty woman, remarkable for the
vivacity of her mind; the Countess de La Rochejaquelein, nee Duras, a
very pious and very charitable woman, whose husband was a
major-general. In fact, the circle around the Duchess of Berry was
perfection. The greatest ladies of France were by her side, and the
society of the Petit Chateau, as the Pavilion de Marsan was called, was
certainly fitted to give the tone to the principal salons of Paris.

The Duchess of Berry had as chevalier d'honneur a great lord, very
learned, known for his unchangeable devotion to royalty, the Duke de
Sevis (born in 1755, died in 1830). The Duke, who emigrated and was
wounded at Quiberon, held himself apart during the Empire, and
published highly esteemed writings on finance, some Memoirs, and a
Recueil de Souvenirs et Portraits. He was a peer of France and member
of the French Academy. For adjunct to the chevalier d'honneur, the
Duchess had the Count Emmanuel de Brissac, one of the finest characters
of the court, married to a Montmorency.

Her first equerry was the Count Charles de Mesnard, a Vendean gentleman
of proven devotion. The Count Charles de Mesnard was born at Lugon, in
1769, the same year as Napoleon, whose fellow-pupil he was at Brienne.
Belonging to one of those old houses of simple gentlemen who have the
antiquity of the greatest races, he was son of a major-general who
distinguished himself in the Seven Years War, and who at the close of
the old regime was gentleman of the chamber of the Count of Provence
(Louis XVIII.), and captain of the Guards of the Gate of this Prince.
He emigrated, and served in the ranks of the army of Conde, with his
older brother, the Count Edouard de Mesnard, married to Mademoiselle de
Caumont-Laforce, daughter of the former governess of the children of
the Count d'Artois (Charles X.), and sister of the Countess of Balbi.
The Count Edouard de Mesnard, having entered Paris secretly, was shot
there as emigre, October 27th, 1797, despite all the efforts of the
wife of General Bonaparte to save him. When he was going to his death,
his eyes met, on the boulevard, those of one of his friends, the
Marquis of Galard, who had returned with him secretly. The condemned
man had the presence of mind to seem not to recognize the passer-by,
and the latter was saved, as he himself related with emotion sixty
years afterward.

At the commencement of the Empire, the Count Charles de Mesnard was
living at London, where he was reduced to gaining his living by copying
music, when the Emperor offered to restore his confiscated property if
he would come to France and unite with the new regime. The Count of
Mesnard preferred to remain in England near the Duke of Berry, who
showed great affection for him. The Restoration compensated the
faithful companion of exile. He was a peer of France and Charles X.
treated him as a friend. He had married, during the Emigration, an
English lady, Mrs. Sarah Mason, widow of General Blondell, by whom he
had a daughter, Aglae, who was named a lady companion to the Duchess of
Berry, at the time of her marriage, in 1825, with the Count Ludovic de
Rosanbo, and a son, Ferdinand, married in 1829, to Mademoiselle de
Bellissen.

The Princess had for equerry-de-main, the Viscount d'Hanache; for
honorary equerry, the Baron of Fontanes; for equerry porte-manteau, M.
Gory. Her secretary of orders was the Marquis de Sassenay, who bore,
besides, the title of Administrator of the Finances and Treasurer of
Madame. He had under his orders a controller-general, M. Michals, who
was of such integrity and devotion that when, after the Revolution of
July, he presented himself at Holyrood to give in his accounts to the
Duchess of Berry, she made him a present of her portrait.

There was not a private household in France where more order reigned
than in that of Madame. The chief of each service,--the Duchess of
Reggio, the Viscount Just de Noailles, the Count Emmanuel de Brissac,
and the Count of Mesnard, presented his or her budget and arranged the
expenditures in advance with the Princess. This budget being paid by
twelfths before the 15th of the following month, she required to have
submitted to her the receipts of the month past. This did not prevent
Madame from being exceedingly generous. One day she learned that a poor
woman had just brought three children into the world and knew not how
to pay for three nurses, three layettes, three cradles. Instantly she
wished to relieve her. But it was the end of the month; the money of
all the services had been spent.

"Lend me something," she said to the controller-general of her
household; "you will trust me; no one will trust this unfortunate
woman."

As M. Nettement remarked: "The Duchess of Berry held it as a principle
that princes should be like the sun which draws water from the streams
only to return it in dew and rain. She considered her civil list as the
property of all, administered by her. She was to be seen at all
expositions and in all the shops, buying whatever was offered that was
most remarkable. Sometimes she kept these purchases, sometimes she sent
them to her family at Naples, Vienna, Madrid, and her letters used
warmly to recommend in foreign cities whatever was useful or beautiful
in France. She was thus in every way the Providence of the arts, of
industry, and commerce."

To sum up, the household of the Duchess of Berry worked to perfection,
and Madame, always affable and good, inspired a profound devotion in
all about her.




XIII

THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION


The coronation of Louis XVI. took place the 11th of June, 1775, and
since that time there had been none. For Louis XVII. there was none but
that of sorrow. Louis XVIII. had desired it eagerly, but he was not
sufficiently strong or alert to bear the fatigue of a ceremony so long
and complicated, and his infirmities would have been too evident
beneath the vault of the ancient Cathedral of Rheims. An interval of
fifty years--from 1775 to 1825--separated the coronation of Louis XVI.
from that of his brother Charles X. How many things had passed in that
half-century, one of the most fruitful in vicissitudes and
catastrophes, one of the strangest and most troubled of which history
has preserved the memory!

Chateaubriand, who, later, in his Memoires d'outretombe, so full of
sadness and bitterness, was to speak of the coronation in a tone of
scepticism verging on raillery, celebrated at the accession of Charles,
in almost epic language, the merits of this traditional solemnity
without which a "Very Christian King" was not yet completely King. In
his pamphlet, Le roi est mort! Vive le roi! he conjured the new monarch
to give to his crown this religious consecration. "Let us humbly
supplicate Charles X. to imitate his ancestors," said the author of the
Genie du Christianisme. "Thirty-two sovereigns of the third race have
received the royal unction, that is to say, all the sovereigns of that
race except Jean 1er, who died four days after his birth, Louis XVII.,
and Louis XVIII., on whom royalty fell, on one in the Tower of the
Temple, on the other in a foreign land. The words of Adalberon,
Archbishop of Rheims, on the subject of the coronation of Hugh Capet,
are still true to-day. 'The coronation of the King of the French,' he
says, 'is a public interest and not a private affair, Publica, sunt
haec negotia, non privata.' May Charles X. deign to weigh these words,
applied to the author of his race; in weeping for a brother, may he
remember that he is King! The Chambers or the Deputies of the Chambers
whom he may summon to Rheims in his suite, the magistrates who shall
swell his cortege, the soldiers who shall surround his person, will
feel the faith of religion and royalty strengthened in them by this
imposing solemnity. Charles VII. created knights at his coronation; the
first Christian King of the French, at his received baptism with four
thousand of his companions in arms. In the same way Charles X. will at
his coronation create more than one knight of the cause of legitimacy,
and more than one Frenchman will there receive the baptism of fidelity."

Charles X. had no hesitation. This crowned representative of the union
of the throne and the altar did not comprehend royalty without
coronation. Not to receive the holy unction would have been for him a
case of conscience, a sort of sacrilege. In opening the session of the
Chambers in the Hall of the Guards at the Louvre, December 22d, 1824,
he announced, amid general approval, the grand solemnity that was to
take place at Rheims in the course of the following year. "I wish," he
said, "the ceremony of my coronation to close the first session of my
reign. You will attend, gentlemen, this august ceremony. There,
prostrate at the foot of the same altar where Clovis received the holy
unction, and in the presence of Him who judges peoples and kings, I
shall renew the oath to maintain and to cause to be respected the
institutions established by my brother; I shall thank Divine Providence
for having deigned to use me to repair the last misfortunes of my
people, and I shall pray Him to continue to protect this beautiful
France that I am proud to govern."

If Napoleon, amid sceptical soldiers, former conventionnels, and former
regicides, had easily secured the adoption of the idea of his
coronation at Notre-Dame, by so much the more easy was it for Charles
X. to obtain the adoption, by royalist France, of the project of his
coronation at Rheims. "The King saw in this act," said Lamartine, "a
real sacrament for the crown, the people a ceremony that carried its
imagination back to the pomps of the past, politicians a concession to
the court of Rome, claiming the investiture of kings, and a denial in
fact of the principle, not formulated but latent since 1789, of the
sovereignty of the people. But as a rule, there was no vehement
discussion of an act generally considered as belonging to the etiquette
of royalty, without importance for or against the institutions of the
country. It was the fete of the accession to the throne--a luxury of
the crown. The oaths to exterminate heretics, formerly taken by the
kings of France at their coronation, were modified in concert with the
court of Rome and the bishops. For these was substituted the oath to
govern according to the Charter. Thus it was in reality a new
consecration of liberty as well as of the crown." The French love pomp,
ceremonies, spectacles. The idea of a consecration was not displeasing
to them, and with rare exceptions, the Voltaireans themselves refrained
from criticising the ceremony that was in the course of preparation. It
soon became the subject of conversation on every side.

Six millions voted by the two Chambers for the expenses of the
coronation, at the time that the civil list was regulated at the
beginning of the reign, permitted the repairs required by the Cathedral
of Rheims to be begun in January, 1825. The arches that had sunken, or
threatened to do so, were strengthened; the ancient sculptured
decorations were restored; the windows were completed; the fallen
statues were raised. It was claimed that even the holy ampulla had been
found, that miraculous oil, believed, according to the royal
superstitions of former ages, to have been brought from heaven by a
dove for the anointing of crowned heads. The Revolution thought that it
had destroyed this relic forever. The 6th of October, 1793, a
commissioner of the Convention, the representative of the people, Ruhl,
had, in fact, publicly broken it on the pedestal of the statue of Louis
XV. But it was related that faithful hands had succeeded in gathering
some fragments of the phial as well as some particles of the balm
contained in it. The 25th of January, 1819, the Abbe Seraine, who in
1793 was cure of Saint-Remi of Rheims, made the following declaration:--

"The 17th of October, 1793, M. Hourelle, then municipal officer and
first warden of the parish of Saint-Remi, came to me and notified me,
from the representative of the people, Ruhl, of the order to remit the
reliquary containing the holy ampulla, to be broken. We resolved, M.
Hourelle and I, since we could do no better, to take from the holy
ampulla the greater part of the balm contained in it. We went to the
Church of Saint-Remi; I withdrew the reliquary from the tomb of the
saint, and bore it to the sacristy, where I opened it with the aid of
small iron pincers. I found placed in the stomach of a dove of gold and
gilded silver, covered with white enamel, having the beak and claws in
red, the wings spread, a little phial of glass of reddish color about
an inch and a half high corked with a piece of crimson damask. I
examined this phial attentively in the light, and I perceived a great
number of marks of a needle on the sides; then I took from a crimson
velvet bag, embroidered with fleurs-de-lis in gold, the needle used at
the time of the consecration of our kings, to extract the particles of
balm, dried and clinging to the glass. I detached as many as possible,
of which I took the larger part, and remitted the smaller to M.
Hourelle."

The particles thus preserved were given into the hands of the
Archbishop of Rheims, who gathered them in a new reliquary.

Sunday, the 22d of May, 1825, the day of the feast of the Pentecost,
the Archbishop of Rheims assembled in a chapel of that city the
metropolitan clergy, the principal authorities, and the persons who had
contributed to the preservation of the particles of the precious relic,
in order to proceed, in their presence, to the transfusion of those
particles into the holy chrism, to be enclosed in a new phial. A
circumtantial report of this ceremony was prepared in duplicate.

"Thus," said the Moniteur, May 26, "there remains no doubt that the
holy oil that will flow on the forehead of Charles X. in the solemnity
of his consecration, is the same as that which, since Clovis, has
consecrated the French monarchs."

The day of the consecration approached. The Mayor of Rheims, M. Ruinard
de Brimont, had not a moment's rest. At the consecration of Louis XV.,
about four hundred lodgings had been marked with chalk. For that of
Charles X. there were sixteen hundred, and those who placed them at the
service of the administration asked no compensation. The 19th of May
was begun the placing of the exterior decorations on the wooden porch
erected in front of the door of the basilica. It harmonized so
completely with the plan of the edifice that "at thirty toises," it
seemed a part of the edifice. The centrings and the interior portieres
of this porch presented to the view a canopy sown with fleurs-de-lis in
the midst of which stood out the royal cipher and the crown of France,
modelled in antique fashion. These decorations were continued from the
portal along the beautiful gallery that led to the palace. The palace
itself, whose apartments had been adorned and furnished with royal
magnificence, was entered by a very elegant porch. The grand
feasting-hall, with its Gothic architecture, its colored glass, its
high chimney-piece covered with escutcheons and surmounted by a statue
of Saint-Remi, its portraits of all the kings of France, was
resplendent. Three tables were to be set in the royal
feasting-hall,--that of the King, that of the Dauphiness, and that of
the Duchess of Berry. A gallery enclosed in glass, where there was a
table of one hundred and thirty covers, had been built as by
enchantment. On leaving the feasting-hall, one entered the covered
gallery, which, by a gentle incline, led to the Cathedral. This gallery
was formed of twenty-four arcades of fifteen feet each, and joined at
right angles the porch erected before the portal. By this arrangement
the King could proceed on a level from his apartment to the Cathedral.

In the middle of the nave was erected a magnificent jube, where the
throne of Charles X. was placed. The cornice of the Corinthian order
was supported by twenty columns. At the four corners there were gilded
angels. The summit was surmounted by a statue of Religion and an angel
bearing the royal crown. This jube, glittering with gold, was placed
about one hundred and fifty feet from the portal. There was a passage
under it to reach the choir, and the ascent to it was by a staircase of
thirty steps. As it was open, the King upon his throne could be seen
from all parts of the basilica. At the end of the choir, to the right
on entering, was the gallery of the Dauphiness and the Duchess of
Berry; to the left, opposite, was that of the princes and princesses of
the blood; lower, toward the jube, and also on the left, that of the
ambassadors and strangers of distinction; by the side of the jube, the
gallery of the first gentlemen of the chamber of the King. There were,
moreover, two rows of galleries on each side of the nave. The sanctuary
was beaming with gold. The pillars, surrounded with wainscoting, were
covered with rich Gothic ornaments. Above each of the galleries was a
portrait of a king of France seated on his throne; still higher,
portraits of bishops and statues of the cities of France in niches. At
the back, a platform had been constructed for the musicians of the
Chapel of the King. The choir and the sanctuary were to be lighted by
thirty-four grand chandeliers, besides the candelabra attached to each
pillar.

Some days before the coronation, which excited the curiosity of all
Europe, the city of Rheims was filled with a crowd of tourists. The
streets and promenades of the city, usually so quiet, presented an
extraordinary animation. There had been constructed a bazaar, tents,
cafes, places for public games, and at the gates of the city there was
a camp of ten thousand men. To visit this camp was a favorite excursion
for the people and for strangers. The soldiers assembled each evening
before their tents and sang hymns to the sovereign and the glory of the
French arms. In the evening of the 22d of May, these military choruses
were closed by the serment francais, sung by all voices. At the words
"Let us swear to be faithful to Charles!" all heads were uncovered, and
the soldiers waving their helmets and shakos in the air, cried over and
again, "Long live the King!"

On May 24th, the King left Paris with the Dauphin. Before going to
Rheims he stopped at the Chateau of Compiegne, where he remained until
the 27th, amid receptions and fetes and hunts.

M. de Chateaubriand was already at Rheims. He wrote on May 26:--

"The King arrives day after to-morrow. He will be crowned Sunday, the
29th. I shall see him place upon his head a crown that no one dreamed
of when I raised my voice in 1814. I write this page of my Memoirs in
the room where I am forgotten amid the noise. This morning I visited
Saint-Remi and the Cathedral decorated in colored paper. The only clear
idea that I can have of this last edifice is from the decorations of
the Jeanne d'Arc of Schiller, played at Berlin. The opera-scene
painters showed me on the banks of the Spree, what the opera-scene
painters on the banks of the Vesle hide from me. But I amused myself
with the old races, from Clovis with his Franks and his legion come
down from heaven, to Charles VII. with Jeanne d'Arc."

The writer, who some weeks earlier had expressed himself in terms so
dithyrambic as to the consecration, now wrote as follows of this
religious and monarchical solemnity:--

"Under what happy auspices did Louis XVI. ascend the throne! How
popular he was, succeeding to Louis XV.! And yet what did he become?
The present coronation will be the representation of a coronation. It
will not be one; we shall see the Marshal Moncey, an actor at that of
Napoleon, the Marshal who formerly celebrated the death of the tyrant
Louis XVI. in his army, brandish the royal sword at Rheims in his rank
as Count of Flanders or Duke of Aquitaine. To whom can this parade
really convey any illusion? I should have wished no pomp to-day; the
King on horseback, the church bare, adorned only with its ancient
arches and tombs; the two Chambers present, the oath of fidelity to the
Charter taken aloud on the Bible. This would have been the renewal of
the monarchy; they might have begun it over again with liberty and
religion. Unfortunately there was little love of liberty, even if they
had had at least a taste for glory."

This is not all; the curious royalist, as if disabused as to Bourbon
glories, so extolled by him, glorifies, apropos of the coronation of
Charles X., the Napoleon whom in 1814 he called disdainfully
"Buonaparte," loading him with the most cutting insults:--

"After all, did not the new coronation, when the Pope anointed a man as
great as the chief of the second race, by a change of heads alter the
effect of the ancient ceremony of our history? The people have been led
to think that a pious rite does not dedicate any one to the throne, or
else renders indifferent the choice of the brow to be touched by the
holy oil. The supernumeraries at Notre-Dame de Paris, playing also in
the Cathedral of Rheims, are no longer anything but the obligatory
personages of a stage that has become common. The advantage really is
with Napoleon, who furnishes his figurants to Charles X. The figure of
the Emperor thenceforth dominates all. It appears in the background of
events and ideas. The leaflets of the good time to which we have
attained shrivel at the glance of his eagles."

Charles X. left Compiegne the 27th of May in the morning, and slept at
Fismes. The next day, the 28th, he had just quitted this town and was
descending a steep hill, when several batteries of the royal guard
fired a salute at his departure; the horses, frightened, took flight.
Thanks to the skill of the postilion, there was no accident to the
King; but a carriage of his suite, in which were the Duke of Aumont,
the Count de Cosse, the Duke of Damas, and the Count Curial, was
overturned and broken, and the last two wounded. At noon Charles X.
arrived at a league and a half from Rheims, at the village of Tinqueux,
where he was awaited by the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the officers
of his civil and military household, the authorities of Rheims, the
legion of the mounted National Guard of Paris, etc. He entered the gold
carriage,--termed the coronation carriage,--where the Dauphin and the
Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon took their places beside him. The cortege
then took up its march. From Tinqueux to Rheims, the royal coach,
gleaming with gold, passed under a long arcade of triumphal arches
adorned with streamers and foliage. From the gates of the city to the
Cathedral, flowers strewed the sand that covered the ground. All the
houses were hung with carpets and garlands; at all the windows, from
all the balconies, from all the roofs, innumerable spectators shouted
their acclamations; the cortege advanced to the sound of all the bells
of the city, and to the noise of a salvo of artillery of one hundred
and one guns. The King was received under a dais at the door of the
metropolitan church, by the Archbishop of Rheims in his pontifical
robes, and accompanied by his suffragans, the Bishops of Soissons,
Beauvais, Chalons, and Amiens. The Archbishop presented the holy water
to the sovereign, who knelt, kissed the Gospels, then was escorted
processionally into the sanctuary. His prie-dieu was placed at fifteen
feet from the altar, on a platform, about which was a magnificent
canopy hung from the ceiling of the Cathedral.

The Dauphiness had entered her gallery with the Duchess of Berry and
the princesses of the blood. The Archbishop celebrated the vespers, and
then the Cardinal de La Fare ascended the pulpit and delivered a sermon
in which he said:--

"God of Clovis, if there is here below a spectacle capable of
interesting Thy infinite Majesty, would it not be that which in this
solemnity fixes universal attention and invites and unites all prayers?
These days of saintly privilege, in which the hero of Tolbiac, and
thirteen centuries after him, the sixty-fifth of his successors have
come to the same temple to receive the same consecration, can they be
confounded with the multitude of human events, to be buried and lost in
the endless annals? To what, O great God! if not to the persistence of
Thy immutable decrees, can we attribute, on this earth, always so
changing and mobile, the supernatural gift of this miraculous duration?"

The Cardinal covered with praises not only the King, but the Dauphin,
the Dauphiness, the Duchess of Berry, the Duke of Bordeaux. He cried:--

"Constantly happy as King, may Charles X. be constantly happy as father!

"May his paternal glances always see about him, shining with a
brilliancy that nothing can change, this family so precious, the
ornament of his court, the charm of his life, the future of France!

"This illustrious Dauphin, the terror of the genius of evil, the swift
avenger of the majesty of kings, conquering hero and peace-maker!

"This magnanimous Princess, the living image of celestial charity, the
visible Providence of the unfortunate, the model of heroism as of
virtue!

"This admirable mother of the Child of Miracle, who restored hope to
the dismayed nation, astonished it by her courage and captivates it by
her goodness!

"This tender scion of the first branch of the lilies, the object,
before his birth, of so many desires, and now of so many hopes."

The Prince of the Church, amid general emotion, thus closed his
discourse:--

"May it be, O Lord! thy protecting will, that if the excess of ills has
surpassed our presentiments and our fear, the reality of good may, in
its turn, surpass our hopes and our desires.

"Condescend that the lasting succor of Thy grace may guide in an
unbroken progress of prosperity and lead to happiness without
vicissitude or end, our King, Thy adorer, and his people, who, under
his laws, shall be more than ever religious and faithful."

After the sermon, the Archbishop celebrated the Te Deum, to which
Charles X. listened standing. Then after having kissed the altar and a
reliquary in which was a piece of the true cross, the sovereign
returned to his apartments in the Archbishop's palace.

Thus passed the eve of the consecration. The same day M. de
Chateaubriand wrote:--

"Rheims, Saturday, the eve of the consecration. I saw the King enter. I
saw pass the gilded coaches of the monarch who, a little while ago, had
not a horse to mount; I saw rolling by, carriages full of courtiers who
had not known how to defend their master. This herd went to the church
to sing the Te Deum, and I went to visit a Roman ruin, and to walk
alone in an elm grove called the Bois d'Amour. I heard from afar the
jubilation of the bells; I contemplated the towers of the Cathedral,
secular witnesses of this ceremony always the same and yet so different
in history, time, ideas, morals, usages, and customs. The monarchy
perished, and for a long time the Cathedral was changed to a stable.
Does Charles X., when he sees it again to-day, recall that he saw Louis
XVI. receive anointment in the same place where he in his turn is to
receive it? Will he believe that a consecration shelters him from
misfortune? There is no longer a hand with virtue enough to cure the
king's evil, no ampulla with holy power sufficient to render kings
inviolable."

Such was the disposition of the great writer, always content with
himself, discontented with others. The crowd of royalists, far from
showing themselves sceptical and morose, as he was, was about to attend
the ceremony of the morrow in a wholly different mood. It had long been
ready with its enthusiasm, and awaited with impatience mingled with
respect the dawn of the day about to rise.




XIV

THE CORONATION


Sunday, the 29th of May, 1825, the city of Rheims presented, even
before sunrise, an extraordinary animation. From four o'clock in the
morning vehicles were circulating in the streets, and an hour after
people with tickets were directing their steps toward the Cathedral,
the men in uniform or court dress, the women in full dress. The sky was
clear and the weather cool.

Let us listen to an eye-witness, the Count d'Haussonville, the future
member of the French Academy:--

"Need I say that the competition had been ardent among women of the
highest rank to obtain access to the galleries of the Cathedral, which,
not having been reserved for the dignitaries, could receive a small
number of happy chosen ones? Such was the eagerness of this feminine
battalion to mount to the assault of the places whence they could see
and be seen, that at six o'clock in the morning when I presented myself
at the Gothic porch built of wood before the Cathedral, I found them
already there and under arms. They were in court dress, with trains,
all wearing, according to etiquette, uniform coiffures of lace passed
through the hair (what they called barbes), and which fell about their
necks and shoulders, conscientiously decolletes. For a cool May morning
it was rather a light costume; they were shivering with cold. In vain
they showed their tickets, and recited, in order to gain entrance,
their titles and their rank; the grenadier of the royal guard, charged
with maintaining order until the hour of the opening of the doors,
marched unmoved before these pretty beggars, among whom I remember to
have remarked the Countess of Choiseul, her sister, the Marchioness of
Crillon, the Countess of Bourbon-Bosset, etc. He had his orders from
his chief to let no one enter, and no one did."

Finally the doors were opened. At a quarter after six all the galleries
were filled. The foreign sovereigns were represented by especial
ambassadors: the King of Spain by the Duke of Villa-Hermosa, the
Emperor of Austria by Prince Esterhazy, the King of England by the Duke
of Northumberland, the Emperor of Russia by the Prince Wolkonski, the
King of Prussia by General de Zastrow. These various personages were
objects of curiosity to the crowd, as was Sidi-Mahmoud, ambassador of
the Bey of Tunis. The rich toilets and dazzling jewels of the ladies of
the court were admired; all eyes were fixed on the gallery where were
the Dauphiness, the Duchess of Berry, and the Duchess and Mademoiselle
d'Orleans, all four resplendent with diamonds. The spectacle was
magnificent. An array of marvels attracted attention. Behind the altar
the sacred vessels in gold, of antique form, the crown in diamonds
surmounted by the famous stone, the "Regent," the other attributes of
royalty on a cushion of velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lis; on the
front of the altar the royal mantle, open, not less than twenty-four
feet in length; on the altar of green-veined marble, superb candelabra
in gold; on the centre of the cross of the church, suspended from the
ceiling above the choir and the prie-dieu of the King, an immense
canopy of crimson velvet, sown with golden fleurs-de-lis; at the back
of the choir, toward the nave, about one hundred and fifty feet from
the portal, the gigantic jube with its staircase of thirty steps; upon
this the throne; all around a swarm of standards, those of the five
companies of the King's body-guard, and the flag of his foot-guards,
borne by the superior officers; on the two sides of the stairway,
ranged en Echelon, the flags and standards of the regiments of the
guard and of the line in camp under the walls of Rheims; a splendor of
light, banishing all regret for the sun, from candelabra at the
entrance of the choir, from chandeliers in the galleries, from
chandeliers full of candles suspended from the ceiling, from tapers on
the columns.

The Cardinals de Clermont-Tonnerre and de La Fare, preceded by the
metropolitan chapter, came to seek the King in his apartment in the
palace. The Grand Preceptor knocked at the door of the royal chamber;
the Grand Chamberlain said in a loud voice:--

"What do you seek?" The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre responded:--

"Charles X., whom God has given us for King."

Then the ushers opened the doors of the chamber. The two cardinals
entered and saluted the sovereign, who rose from his chair, bowed, and
received the holy water. The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre recited a
prayer. The cortege was formed, and in the following order traversed
the great covered gallery which had been built along the right side of
the Cathedral:--

The metropolitan chapter; the King's foot-guards; the band; the
heralds-at-arms; the king-at-arms; the aides de ceremonies; the Grand
Master of Ceremonies, Marquis de Dreux-Breze; the four knights of the
Order of the Holy Spirit, who were to carry the offerings, viz. the
Duke de Vauguyon the wine in a golden vase, the Duke of Rochefoucauld
the pain d'argent, the Duke of Luxembourg the pain d'or, the Duke of
Gramont the ewers filled with silver medals; the King's pages on the
flanks; the Marshal Moncey, Duke of Conegliano, charged with the
functions of constable, holding in his hand his naked sword; the Duke
of Mortemart, captain-colonel of the foot-guards in ordinary to the
King; the Marshal Victor Duke of Bellune, major-general of the royal
guard; the Marshal Marquis de Lauriston, the Count de Cosse, and the
Duke de Polignac, named by the King to bear his train in the church;
then, with his two attendant cardinals, de Clermont-Tonnerre and de La
Fare, one at his right, the other at his left, the King.

There was a movement of curiosity, attention, and respect. Charles X.
had entered the Cathedral. The moment his foot crossed the threshold,
Cardinal de La Fare pronounced a prayer:--

"O God, who knowest that the human race cannot subsist by its own
virtue, grant Thy succor to Charles, Thy servant, whom Thou hast put at
the head of Thy people, that he may himself succor and protect those
subject to him."

Here, then, is Charles X. in that basilica where fifty years before,
Sunday, June 11, 1775, he assisted at the coronation of his brother
Louis XVI. Then he was seventeen. Ah! what would have been his surprise
had it been foretold to him by what strange and horrible series of
gloomy and bloody dramas he should himself come to be crowned in this
Cathedral of Rheims! What a contrast between the religious pomps of
June 11, 1775, and the sacrilegious scaffolds of January 21 and October
16, 1793! What a difference between the royal mantle of the sovereign
and the humble costume of the captive of the Temple, between the
resplendent toilet of the Queen of France and Navarre and the patched
gown of the prisoner of the Conciergerie! What a road travelled between
the hosannas of the priests and the insults of the Furies of the
Guillotine! What reflections might one make who had been present at
both the ceremonies! How much must such an one have been moved were he
the King himself, the brother of Louis XVI., Charles X.! But the 29th
of May, 1825, all hearts inclined to confidence and joy. Peoples forget
quickly, and there were but few to call up sinister memories. The
sovereign appeared in his first costume, a camisole of white satin,
with a cap rich with diamonds, surmounted by black and white plumes.
Despite his sixty-seven years, Charles X. had a fine presence, a
slender form, a manner almost youthful. State costumes became him
perfectly. He wore them with the elegance of the men of the old court.

Let us listen again to Count d'Haussonville:--

"At the moment Charles X. crossed the nave, clad in a gown of white
satin, opened over a doublet of the same color and the same material, a
general thrill evoked a thousand little cries of ecstasy from my lady
neighbors. With that sensitiveness to grace innate with women, and
which never fails to delight them, how could they help applauding the
royal and supremely elegant fashion in which Charles X., despite his
age, wore this strange and slightly theatrical costume? No one was
better adapted than he, in default of more solid qualities, to give a
becoming air to the outward manifestations of a royalty that was at
once amiable and dignified."

It is half-past seven in the morning. The ceremony begins. Escorted by
his two attendant cardinals, the King reaches the foot of the altar and
kneels. Mgr. de Latil, Archbishop of Rheims, standing and without his
mitre, pronounces this prayer:--

"Almighty God, who rulest all above us, and who hast deigned to raise
to the throne Thy servant Charles, we implore Thee to preserve him from
all adversity, to strengthen him with the gift of the peace of the
Church, and to bring him by Thy grace to the joys of a peace eternal!"

The King is now escorted by the two cardinals to the seat prepared for
him in the centre of the sanctuary, under the great dais, a little in
advance of the first of the steps that divide the sanctuary from the
choir. At his right are the Dauphin, the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke
of Bourbon, their ducal crowns on their heads.

The Veni Creator having been sung, the Archbishop takes the book of the
Gospels, on which he places a piece of the true cross, and holds it
open before the monarch. Charles X., seated, his head covered, his hand
on the Gospels and the true cross, pronounces in a strong voice the
oath of coronation:--

"In the presence of God, I promise to my people to maintain and honor
our holy religion, as belongs to the very Christian King and eldest son
of the Church; to render good justice to all my subjects; finally, to
govern according to the laws of the kingdom and the Constitutional
Charter, which I swear faithfully to observe, so help me God and His
holy Gospels."

The King next takes two other oaths, the first as sovereign chief and
grand master of the Order of the Holy Spirit, the others as sovereign
chief and grand master of the military and royal Order of Saint Louis
and of the royal Orde

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