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

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