Part 4 (1/2)
This capture was a great embarra.s.sment to the Government. Pity for the devoted mother, the persecuted princess, the brave, self-sacrificing woman, stirred thousands of hearts. The d.u.c.h.ess was sent at once to an old chateau called Blaye, on the banks of the Gironde, the estuary formed by the junction of the Dordogne and the Garonne. Tradition said that the old castle had been built by the paladin Orlando (or Roland), and that he had been buried within its walls after he fell at Roncesvalles.
In this citadel the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri was confined, with every precaution against escape or rescue; and the restraint and monotony of such a life soon told upon a woman of her character. She could play the heroine, acting well her part, with an admiring world for her audience; but ”cabined, cribbed, confined” in an old, dilapidated castle, her courage and her health gave way. She was cheered, however, at first by Legitimist testimonies of devotion.
Chateaubriand wrote her a memorable letter, imploring her, in the name of M. de Malesherbes, his ancestor who had defended Louis XVI., to let him undertake her defence, if she were brought to trial; but the reigning family of France had no wish to proceed to such an extremity. The d.u.c.h.ess had not come of a stock in which all the women were _sans reproche_, like Marie Amelie. Her grandmother, Queen Caroline of Naples, the friend of Lady Hamilton and of Lord Nelson, had been notoriously a bad woman; her sister, Queen Christina of Spain, had made herself equally famous; and doubts had already been thrown on the legitimacy of the son of the d.u.c.h.ess, the posthumous child of the Duc de Berri. The queen of France, who was almost a saint, had been fond of her young relative for her many engaging qualities; and what to do with her, in justice to France, was a difficult problem.
To the consternation and disgust of the Legitimists, the heroine of La Vendee dropped from her pedestal and sank into the mire.
”She lost everything,” says Louis Blanc,--”even the sympathy of the most ultra-partisans of the Bourbon dynasty; and she deserved the fate that overtook her. It was the sequel to the discovery of a terrible secret,--a secret whose publicity became a just punishment for her having, in pursuit of her own purposes, let loose on France the dogs of civil war.”
In the midst of enthusiasm for her courage and pity for her fate, rose a rumor that the d.u.c.h.ess would shortly give birth to a child.
It was even so. The news fell like a blow on the hearts of the royalists. If she had made a clandestine, morganatic marriage, she had by the law of France forfeited her position as regent during her son's minority; she had forgotten his claims on her and those of France. If there was no marriage, she had degraded herself past all sympathy. At any rate, now she was harmless. The policy of the Government was manifestly to let her child be born at Blaye, and then send her to her Neapolitan home.
Her desire was to leave Blaye before her confinement. In vain she pleaded her health and a tendency to consumption. The Government sent physicians to Blaye, among them the doctor who had attended the d.u.c.h.ess after the birth of the Duc de Bordeaux; for it insisted on having full proof of her disgrace before releasing her. But before this disgrace was announced in Paris, twelve ardent young Legitimists had bound themselves to fight twelve duels with twelve leading men of the opposite party, who might, if she were brought to trial, injure her cause. The first of these duels took place; Armand Carrel, the journalist, being the liberal champion, while M. Roux-Laborie fought for the d.u.c.h.ess. The duel was with swords, and lasted three minutes. Twice Carrel wounded his adversary in the arm; but as he rushed on him the third time, he received a deep wound in the abdomen. The news spread through Paris. The prime minister, M. Thiers, sent his private secretary for authentic news of Carrel's state. The attendants refused to allow the wounded man to be disturbed. ”Let him see me,” said Carrel; ”for I have a favor to ask of M. Thiers,--that he will let no proceedings be taken against M. Roux-Laborie.”
Government after this became anxious to quench the loyalty of the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri's defenders as soon and as effectually as possible.
The duel with Armand Carrel was fought Feb. 2, 1833; on the 22d of February General Bugeaud, commander of the fortress of Blaye, received from the d.u.c.h.ess the following declaration:--
Under the pressure of circ.u.mstances and of measures taken by Government, I think it due to myself and to my children (though I have had grave reasons for keeping my marriage a secret) to declare that I have been privately married during my late sojourn in Italy.
(Signed) MARIE CAROLINE.
From that time up to the month of May the d.u.c.h.ess continued to make vain efforts to obtain her release before the birth of her child. It had been intimated to her that she should be sent to Palermo as soon afterwards as she should be able to travel.
The Government took every precaution, that the event might be verified when it took place. Six or seven of the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of Blaye were stationed in an adjoining chamber, as is the custom at the birth of princes.
A little girl having been born, these witnesses were summoned to the chamber by Madame de Hautfort, the d.u.c.h.ess's lady-in-waiting.
The d.u.c.h.ess answered their questions firmly, and on returning to the next room, her own physician declared on oath that the d.u.c.h.ess was the lawful wife of Count Hector Luchesi-Palli, of the family of Campo Formio, of Naples, gentleman of the bedchamber to the king of the Two Sicilies, living at Palermo.
This was the first intimation given of the parentage of the child.
A mouth later, Marie Caroline and her infant embarked on board a French vessel, attended by Marshal Bugeaud, and were landed at Palermo. Very few of the d.u.c.h.ess's most ardent admirers in former days were willing to accompany her. Her baby died before it was many months old. Charles X. refused to let her have any further care or charge of her son. ”As Madame Luchesi-Palli,” he said, ”she had forfeited all claims to royal consideration.”
A reconciliation, however, official rather than real, was patched up by Chateaubriand between the d.u.c.h.ess and Charles X.; but her political career was over. She was allowed to see the Duc de Bordeaux for two or three days once a year. The young prince was thenceforward under the maternal care of his aunt, the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme. The d.u.c.h.esse de Berri pa.s.sed the remainder of her adventurous life in tranquillity. Her marriage with Count Luchesi-Palli was apparently a happy one. They had four children. She owned a palace in Styria, and another on the Grand Ca.n.a.l at Venice, where she gave popular parties. In 1847 she gave some private theatricals, at which were present twenty-seven persons belonging to royal or imperial families.
Her buoyancy of spirit kept her always gay. One would have supposed that she would be overwhelmed by the fall we have related. She was good-natured, charitable, and extravagant. She died leaving heavy debts, which the Duc de Bordeaux paid for her. Her daughter Louise, sister of the Duc de Bordeaux, married the Duke of Parma, who was a.s.sa.s.sinated in 1854. Their daughter married Don Carlos, who claims at present to be rightful heir to the thrones of France and Spain. She died in 1864, shortly after the Count Luchesi-Palli.
The d.u.c.h.esse de Berri, who in her later years became very devout, _d'apres la maniere Italienne_, as somebody has said, wrote thus about his death:--
”I have been so tried that my poor head reels. The loss of my good and pious daughter made me almost crazy, but the care of my husband had somewhat calmed me, when G.o.d took him to himself. He died like a saint in my arms, with his children around him, smiling at me and pointing to heaven.”
The d.u.c.h.ess died suddenly at Brussels in 1870, aged seventy-one.
”And,” adds an intensely Legitimist writer from whom I have taken these details of her declining years, ”had she lived till 1873, she would have given her son better advice than that he followed.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Memoire de la d.u.c.h.esse d'Angouleme.]
Without following the ins and outs of politics during the first ten years of Louis Philippe's reign, which were checkered by revolts, _emeutes_, and attempts at regicide, I pa.s.s on to the next event of general interest,--the explosion of the ”infernal machine” of Fieschi.
It was customary for King Louis Philippe to make a grand military promenade through Paris on one of the three days of July which during his reign were days of public festivity. On the morning of July 28, 1835, as the clock struck ten, the king, accompanied by his three elder sons, Marshals Mortier and Lobeau, his ministers, his staff, his household, and many generals, rode forth to review forty thousand troops along the Boulevards. At midday they reached the Boulevard du Temple. There, as the king was bending forward to receive a pet.i.tion, a sudden volley of musketry took place, and the pavement was strewed with dead and dying. Marshal Mortier was killed, together with a number of officers of various grades, some bystanders, a young girl, and an old man. The king had not been shot, but as his horse started, he had received a severe contusion on the arm. The Duke of Orleans and the Prince de Joinville were slightly hurt. Smoke came pouring from the third-story windows of a house (No. 50) on the Boulevard. A man sprang from the window, seized a rope hanging from the chimney, and swung himself on to a lower roof. As he did so, he knocked down a flower-pot, which attracted attention to his movements. A police agent saw him, and a national guard arrested him. He was in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, and his face was covered with blood. The infernal machine he had employed consisted of twenty-five gun-barrels on a stand so constructed that they could all be fired at once. Happily two did not go off, and four burst, wounding the wretch who had fired them. Instantly the reception of the king, which had been cold when he set forth, changed into rapturous enthusiasm. He and his sons had borne themselves with the greatest bravery.
The queen had been about to quit the Tuileries to witness the review, when the door of her dressing-room was pushed open, and a colonel burst in, exclaiming: ”Madame, the king has been fired at. He is not hurt, nor the princes, but the Boulevard is strewn with corpses.”
The queen, raising her trembling hands to heaven, waited only for a repet.i.tion of his a.s.surance that her dear ones were all safe, and then set out to find the king. She met him on the staircase, and husband and wife wept in each other's arms.
The queen then went to her sons, looked at them, and touched them, hardly able to believe that they were not seriously wounded, and turned away, shuddering, from the blood on M. Thiers' clothes.