Part 3 (2/2)

She regretted her inaction during the days of July, when, had she taken her son by the hand and presented him herself to the people, renouncing in his name and her own all ultra-Bourbon traditions and ideas, she might have saved the dynasty.

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc and papers in ”Figaro.”]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIE CAROLINE FERDINANDE LOUISE, d.u.c.h.eSSE DE BERRY.

Nee a Naples, le 5 Novembre 1798.]

Under the influence of this regret, and fired by the idea of becoming another Jeanne d'Albret, she urged her plans on Charles X., who decidedly disapproved of them; but ”the idea of crossing the seas at the head of faithful paladins, of landing after the perils and adventures of an unpremeditated voyage in a country of knights-errant, of eluding by a thousand disguises the vigilance of enemies through whom she had to pa.s.s, of wandering, a devoted mother and a banished queen, from hamlet to hamlet and from chateau to chateau, appealing to human nature high and low on its romantic side, and at the end of a victorious conspiracy unfurling in France the ancient standard of the monarchy, was too dazzling not to attract a young, high-spirited woman, bold through her very ignorance, heroic through mere levity, able to endure anything but depression and _ennui_, and prepared to overbear all opposition with plausible plat.i.tudes about a mother's love.”[1]

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc, Histoire de Dix Ans.]

At last Charles X. consented to let her follow her own wishes; but he placed her under the guardians.h.i.+p of the Duc de Blancas.

She set out through Holland and the Tyrol for Italy. She travelled _incognita_, of course. Charles Albert, of Sardinia, received her at Turin with great personal kindness, and lent her a million of francs,--which he borrowed from a n.o.bleman of his court under pretence of paying the debts of his early manhood; but he was forced to request her to leave his dominions, and she took refuge with the Duke of Modena, who a.s.signed her a palace at Ma.s.sa, about three miles from the Mediterranean. A rising was to be made simultaneously in Southern France and in La Vendee. Lyons had just been agitated by a labor insurrection, and Ma.r.s.eilles was the first point at which it was intended to strike.

The Legitimists in France were divided into two parties. One, under Chateaubriand and Marshal Victor, the Duc de Bellune, wished to restore Henri V. only by parliamentary and legal victories; the other, favored by the court at Holyrood, was for an armed intervention of the Great Powers. The Duc de Blancas was considered its head.

The question of the invasion of France with foreign troops was excitedly argued at Ma.s.sa. The d.u.c.h.ess wished above all things to get rid of the tutelage of M. de Blancas, and she was disposed to favor, to a certain extent, the more moderate views of Chateaubriand.

After endless quarrels she succeeded in sending off the duke to Holyrood, and was left to take her own way.

April 14, 1832, was fixed upon for leaving Ma.s.sa. It was given out that the d.u.c.h.ess, was going to Florence. At nightfall a carriage, containing the d.u.c.h.ess, with two ladies and a gentleman of her suite, drove out of Ma.s.sa and waited under the shadow of the city wall. While a footman was absorbing the attention of the coachman by giving him some minute, unnecessary orders, Madame (as they called the d.u.c.h.ess) slipped out of the carriage door with one of her ladies, while two others, who were standing ready in the darkness, took their places. The carriage rolled away towards Florence, while Madame and her party, stealing along under the dark shadow of the city wall, made their way to the port, where a steamer was to take them on board.

That steamer was the ”Carlo Alberto,” a little vessel which had been already used by some republican conspirators, and had been purchased for the service of Marie Caroline. It had some of her most devoted adherents on board, but the captain was in ignorance.

He thought himself bound for Genoa, and was inclined to disobey when his pa.s.sengers ordered him to lay to off the harbor of Ma.s.sa.

However, they used force, and at three in the morning Marie Caroline, who was sleeping, wrapped in her cloak, upon the sand, was roused, put on board a little boat, and carried out to the steamer. She had a tempestuous pa.s.sage of four days to Ma.r.s.eilles. The steamer ran out of coal, and had to put into Nice. At last, in a heavy sea which threatened to dash small craft to pieces, a fis.h.i.+ng-boat approached the ”Carlo Alberto,” containing some of the d.u.c.h.ess's most devoted friends. With great danger she was transferred to it, and was landed on the French coast. She scrambled up slippery and precipitous rocks, and reached a place of safety. But the delay in the arrival of her steamer had been fatal to her enterprise.

A French gentleman in the secret had hired a small boat, and put out to sea in the storm to see if he could perceive the missing vessel. His conduct excited the suspicion of his crew, who talked about it at a wine-shop, where they met other sailors, who had their story to tell of a lady landed mysteriously a few hours before at a dangerous and lonely spot a few miles away. The two accounts soon reached the ears of the police, and Ma.r.s.eilles was on the alert, when a party of young men, with their swords drawn and waving white handkerchiefs, precipitated their enterprise, by appearing in the streets and striving to rouse the populace. They were arrested, as were also the pa.s.sengers left on board the ”Carlo Alberto,”--among them was a lady who deceived the police into a belief that she was the d.u.c.h.esse de Bern.

Under cover of this mistake the d.u.c.h.ess, finding that all hope was over in the southern provinces, resolved to cross France to La Vendee. At Ma.s.sa she had had a dream. She thought the Duc de Bern had appeared to her and said: ”You will not succeed in the South, but you will prosper in La Vendee.”

She quitted the hut in which she had been concealed, made her way on foot through a forest, lost herself, and had to sleep in the vacant cabin of a woodcutter. The next night she pa.s.sed under the roof of a republican, who respected her s.e.x and would not betray her. She then reached the chateau of a Legitimist n.o.bleman with the appropriate name of M. de Bonrecueil. Thence she started in the morning in a postchaise to cross all France along its public roads.

She accomplished her journey in safety, and fixed May 24, 1832, as the day for taking up arms. She made her headquarters at a Breton farm-house, Les Meliers. She wore the costume of a boy,--a peasant of La Vendee--and called herself Pet.i.t Pierre.

On May 21, three days before the date fixed upon for the rising, she was waited upon by the chiefs,--the men most likely to suffer in an abortive insurrection,--and was a.s.sured that the attempt would fail. Had the South risen, La Vendee would have gladly joined the insurrection; but unsupported by the South, the proposed enterprise was too rash a venture. Overpowered by these arguments and the persuasions of those around her, Marie Caroline gave way, and consented to return to Scotland with a pa.s.sport that had been provided for her.

But in the night she retracted her consent, and insisted that the rising should take place upon the 3d of June. She was obeyed; but what little prospect of success there might have been at first, was destroyed by the counter-order of May 22. All who rose were at once put down by the king's troops, and atrocities on both sides were committed.

Nantes, the capital city of La Vendee, was hostile to the d.u.c.h.ess; in Nantes, therefore, she believed her enemies would never search for her. She took refuge there in the house of two elderly maiden ladies, the Demoiselles Duguigney, where she remained five months.

They must have been months of anguish to her, and of unspeakable impatience. It is very possible that the Government did not care to find her. She was the queen's niece, and if captured what could be done with her? To set her free to hatch new plots would have been bitterly condemned by the republicans; to imprison her would have made an additional motive for royalist conspiracies; to execute her would have been impossible. Marie Caroline, however, had solved these difficult problems by her own misconduct.

Meantime the premiers.h.i.+p of France pa.s.sed into the hands of M.

Thiers. A Jew--a Judas--named Deutz, came to him mysteriously, and bargained to deliver into his hands the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri.

Thiers, who had none of the pity felt for her by the Orleans family, closed with the offer. Some years before, Deutz had renounced his Jewish faith and pretended to turn Christian. Pope Gregory XVI.

had patronized him, and had recommended him to the Duc de Berri as a confidential messenger. He had frequently carried despatches of importance, and knew that the d.u.c.h.ess was in Nantes, but he did not know her hiding-place. He contrived to persuade her to grant him an interview. It took place at the Demoiselles Duguigney's house; but he was led to believe that she only used their residence for that purpose. With great difficulty he procured a second interview, in the course of which, having taken his measures beforehand, soldiers surrounded the house. Before they could enter it, word was brought to the d.u.c.h.ess that she was betrayed. She fled from the room, and when the soldiers entered they could not find her. They were certain that she had not left the house. They broke everything to pieces, sounded the walls, ripped up the beds and furniture. Night came on, and troops were left in every chamber. In a large garret, where there was a wide fireplace, the soldiers collected some newspapers and light wood, and about midnight built a fire. Soon within the chimney a noise of kicking against an iron panel was heard, and voices cried: ”Let us out,--we surrender!”

For sixteen hours the d.u.c.h.ess and two friends had been imprisoned in a tiny hiding-place, separated from the hearth by a thin iron sliding-panel, which, when the soldiers lit their fire, had grown red hot. The gentleman of the party was already badly burned, and the women were nearly suffocated. The gendarmes kicked away the fire, the panel was pushed back, and the d.u.c.h.ess, pale and fainting, came forth and surrendered. The commander of the troops was sent for. To him she said: ”General, I confide myself to your honor.”

He answered, ”Madame, you are under the safeguard of the honor of France.”

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