A DAUGHTER OF SORROWS.
EXILE AND RESTORATION.
I
twas midnight on the 19th of December, her seventeenth birthday, when Madame Royale left the Temple. M. Benezech, the Minister of the Interior, escorted her to the Porte St. Martin, where the travelling carriage provided for her journey to Vienna was in waiting. There went with her the Marchioness de Soucy, sub-governess to the children of France, an officer of the gendarmerie, and M. Gomin, one of the commissaries of the Temple. Hué joined her at Huningen, which she reached on Christmas Eve. Although all precautions were taken to prevent her being known, the princess was frequently recognised, and greeted with silent respect, in the course of her journey. She stayed over the 25th at the sign of the “Crow” at Huningen, and set out for Basle on the next day. As she left her room the innkeeper fell at her feet and asked her blessing. Tears stood in her eyes as she entered the carriage. “I leave France with regret,” she said, “and shall never cease to regard it as my country.”
At Basle the exchange was effected, and Madame Royale left on the night of the 26th, accompanied by Madame de Soucy and escorted by the Prince de Gavres, who had been appointed by the Austrian Emperor for the purpose. At Lauffenbourg she stayed a day to celebrate a service in memory of her parents, and at Innspruck she remained two days to visit her aunt, the Archduchess Elizabeth. She arrived in Vienna on the 9th of January, 1796.
Warmly received by the Emperor and Empress, with a household appointed for her in accordance with her rank, Madame Royale took her place at the Austrian Court, and here she spent the next four years. But amid the glitter of the Court of Vienna she was, perhaps, more truly lonely than she had been in the Tower of the Temple. Her heart was in the graves of those she loved, and the mourning garments which she wore told truly that she lived in the past. The Archduke Charles sought her hand, and the Emperor and Empress urged, and even insisted, that she should accept him. But Madame Royale steadily declined. She had no heart to give a lover; but the wish of her father and mother pointed out the path she was to take, and if she must wed it could only be her cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême. Her refusal drew down on her the Imperial displeasure, which was augmented by her careful avoidance of various political schemes into which it was sought to entangle her.
It was a great relief, therefore, to the princess when this anomalous position was put an end to in the spring of 1799 by a demand on the part of the Emperor of Russia, made at the request of Louis XVIII., in terms which allowed no refusal, that Madame Royale should be permitted to join her uncle and the other members of her father’s family at Mittau, in Courland, where they were then residing.
The princess gladly set out from Vienna in May, and on the 4th of June she was met at the gates of Mittau by Louis XVIII., his wife, and the Duc d’Angoulême. It was a touching meeting, memories of the past crowding up and dimming the happiness of the present, while rendering it more sacred. Not only her relatives, but loyal nobles of France and faithful servants of her father received Madame Royale at Mittau. Of these the most notable was the Abbé Edgeworth, who had attended Louis XVI. on the scaffold. The princess was, at her own request, left alone with the abbé, that she might learn from him the details of her father’s last moments. She ever cherished for the good man the warmest regard, and when, some years after, a dangerous fever broke out at Mittau and numbered him among its victims, it was Madame Royale who took her place by his bedside, closed his dying eyes, and followed his remains to the grave.
The thought that lay uppermost in the minds of all when the first emotions of meeting were over, was the permanent union of Madame Royale to her family by her marriage with the Duc d’Angoulême. Where the wishes of all parties were at one, there was no need for delay. On the 10th of June, six days after the princess’s arrival, the marriage ceremony took place in the gallery of the ducal castle. Loving hands had decked the altar with branches of lilac and summer flowers, and here, in a strange land, in the presence of the little court of Louis XVIII., the prince and princess plighted their troth. It was the fulfilment of a vow rather than the consummation of a love match, and the faith was plighted to the dead as much as to the living.
We have lingered so long over Madame Royale’s early life that we have no space to do more than glance at the years which immediately followed her marriage. In 1801 the exiles were obliged, through the caprice of the Czar, to quit Mittau in the depth of a severe winter. They appealed to the King of Prussia for a refuge, and he appointed Warsaw, where they remained some years. In 1805 they were again at Mittau. In 1808 they came to England. Here for two years they resided at Gosfield Hall, a seat of the Marquis of Buckingham in Essex, and here, in November, 1810, Louis XVIII. lost his Queen.
They then removed to Hartwell Hall, a fine Elizabethan house between Oxford and Aylesbury, which they occupied until the year 1814.
Some memories of the Duchess of Angoulême at Hartwell have been preserved. She is described as reserved and sad, and averse to the notice or attention of strangers. But she would often be seen standing in the porch of the little church a silent spectator of the Protestant service, and she expressed to the minister her pleasure at the reverence and fitness which characterised the English mode of worship.
When the events of 1814 drove Napoleon into exile, and brought back Louis XVIII. to the throne, the Duchess of Angoulême was at Hartwell with her uncle. It was on the 25th of March that the news reached them of the proclamation of Louis XVIII. at Bordeaux. A month later they set out on their return to France. The Prince Regent accompanied them to Dover, the Duke of Clarence escorted them across the Channel. From Calais to Paris their progress was one long triumphal procession.
The state entry of the King into Paris took place on the 3rd of May. Seated in an open carriage drawn by eight white horses, Louis XVIII. had on his left hand the “daughter of the last King.” It was on her that all eyes were turned, and to her that the warmest tribute of welcome was paid. Dressed wholly in white, there was on her countenance a kind of grave joy which struck all beholders. What strangely mingled thoughts were passing through her mind may well be imagined. Tears which she could notrestrain fell frequently from her eyes. When she reached the Tuileries, which she had not seen since the fatal day when her parents had left it to take refuge in the Assembly twenty-two years before, the thronging memories of the past were too much for nature to bear, and she was carried into the palace in a swoon.
There had reached Madame Royale, year by year during her exile, a bunch of flowers gathered from her mother’s grave. A faithful old Royalist, M. Descloseaux, had bought the ground in which the King and Queen, amongst many other victims of the Reign of Terror, had been interred, and to keep it sacred had converted it into an orchard and planted it with flowers. To this sacred spot the Duchess of Angoulême bent her steps the day after her entry into Paris, and there, as she thanked M. Descloseaux in a voice broken by emotion, the loyal old man made over to her the ground he had been preserving for her for the past seventeen years.
Public rejoicings followed the restoration in abundance. At the opera “Edipus at Colonos” was presented, and at the passage where Edipus recounts the tender care of Antigone, Louis XVIII. turned to the Duchess of Angoulême and kissed her hand.
Crowds came to the Tuileries to be presented to the duchess. She received twelve at a time, and the ladies so presented all wore white, with coronets of fleur-de-lys. The likeness which the duchess bore to her mother was much remarked; but it has been called “the resemblance of cold marble to animated flesh and blood,” and youngdébutanteswere apt to look upon the reserve and self-repression of the princess as austerity or want of sympathy. The terrible past was too deeply impressed on her mind for her to shake it off. The blessing of children, whose care and training might have brought her new hopes and new associations, had been denied her, and her thoughts went back constantly to the days of her youth and to the loved ones who had been so cruelly torn from her.
Within the year of the Restoration the Duchess of Angoulême found new work to her hand. Ten months after Louis XVIII.’s entry into Paris came the tidings that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and once more landed on French soil. The hearts of the French people, never aroused to enthusiasm for Louis XVIII., turned instinctively to the Emperor. The Duchess of Angoulême was at Bordeaux when the news reached her. The men of the city were loyal to the monarchy, but the soldiers of the line awaited the course of events in silence. It was to win these that the duchess bent all her energy. Mounted on horseback, she reviewed the troops day after day, and sought earnestly to make them declare for the King. She met with little or no support, and when, on the 1st of April, the Imperial forces, under General Clauzel, arrived before the city, it was evident that all their sympathies were with the Emperor. Perceiving this, the duchess addressed herself to the National Guard and the citizen volunteers. These, regardless of personal danger, she reviewed in face of the enemy, whose loaded guns on the other side of the river commanded the position. General Clauzel, in the true spirit of chivalry, kept his men from firing. His first duty, he said, was to respect the courage of the duchess. He could not order her to be fired upon when she was providing material for the noblest page in her history. The Duchess of Angoulême did not forget General Clauzel’s chivalrous conduct. When he afterwards fell a prisoner into the hands of the Royalists, she interceded with the King and saved his life.
But it was too evident that the duchess’s efforts were in vain. With tears in her eyes she thanked the National Guard for what they had done, and begged them, as a last favour, to lay down their arms and so avoid bloodshed. Then, with a sad heart, she set out for Pouillac, where she embarked for Spain. As she once more quitted the shore of France as an exile, she turned to the people who were assembled to witness her departure, and distributed amongst them the plume of white feathers which she wore in her hair. “Bring them back to me with better days,” she said, “and Marie Thérèse will show you she has a good memory, and has not forgotten her friends at Bordeaux.”
The King had fled already, and the Duc d’Angoulême was temporarily a prisoner. But who does not know the story of the Hundred Days? It was on the 3rd of April that the Duchess of Angoulême left France; on the 18th of June Napoleon staked and lost all on the field of Waterloo. Five weeks later the duchess was once more on her way to Paris, her path strewn with flowers and the air rent with shouts of welcome. Louis XVIII. was already there, and as she rejoined her uncle at the Tuileries, it might have seemed that the cries of the populace were but the echoes of those of the year before, which time had not yet allowed to die away.
But the orphan of the Temple—thefilia dolorosaof France—had had bitter experience of the fickle, easily-swayed French people. Was it matter for wonder if she withdrew more than ever into herself, and appeared more than ever cold and austere? Taking as little part as possible in Court festivities, she led a simple, retired life. Rising early in the morning, she lit her fire and made her early breakfast with her own hands. At seven o’clock she went to mass in the chapel of the palace. The day passed in simple routine; no sumptuous dinners or late hours were known in her household. But her charity flowed forth freely to all who were in need, although it was wisely administered so as to reach only the really deserving. The anniversaries of her parents’ deaths were always kept by her in strictest seclusion, and it was noticed that in her daily drives her carriage always made a wide detour, rather than pass the fatal spot where they had perished on the scaffold.
(To be concluded.)