A DAUGHTER OF SORROWS.
LAST DAYS.
I
tmight have seemed now that Marie Thérèse of France had endured enough of sorrow, and that her days might be allowed to flow on evenly—not, indeed, joyfully, but in a calm content. For a year or two it seemed as if this would be the case, but there were still other storms to be encountered before the life history was to be complete.
Five years after the second Restoration the Duc de Berri was assassinated at the Opéra. The Duchess of Angoulême was one of those immediately summoned to the ante-room of the Opera House, where her brother-in-law lay dying. Her husband, fearing some danger, would have restrained her from accompanying him, but she felt her place was there. “What,” exclaims Châteaubriand, “were dangers to her, who was accustomed to look revolution in the face!” Herself overcome with grief, she paid a noble tribute to the fortitude of the Duchesse de Berri. “She is sublime,” she said more than once; and, bending over the dying man, she said, “Courage, brother; and if God calls you hence, ask my father there to pray for France and for us.”
When, six months after his father’s death, the only son of the Duc and Duchesse de Berri was born, it was the Duchess of Angoulême, to whom the blessing of children had been denied, who showed the infant to the people assembled before the palace windows with every sign of joy and delight.
The death of Louis XVIII. in 1824 made the Duchess of Angoulême Dauphine of France. But her life continued as retired as ever, and she spent much of her time in watching over the early years of her little nephew, the Duc de Bordeaux. After six comparatively uneventful years the storm broke which doomed her to a final exile. The duchess was at Dijon when a hostile reception at the theatre announced to her that there was once more a revolution. Travelling all night with one or two attendants to Versailles, she made her way in the disguise of a peasant to St. Cloud, only to find that the King was at Rambouillet. “Can you forgive me?” cried Charles X. as he met his niece. Her answer was an embrace. “I trust,” she said, “we are now united for ever.” The King abdicated, and the Duc d’Angoulême surrendered his claims in favour of the little Duc de Bordeaux, while Louis Philippe of Orleans was to be Lieutenant-General during the prince’s minority. But the Chamber of Deputies declared for Louis Philippe. After some little hesitation, he consented to become “King of the French,” and there was nothing left for Charles X. but to depart. Escorted by the commissioners sent by the new king for the purpose, the royal family passed with slow stateliness on their way to the sea coast, taking a fortnight in reaching Cherbourg. The last pageant of the departing dynasty was witnessed for the most part with silent respect. The little Duc de Bordeaux and his sister, ignorant of the meaning of it all, stood at the carriage windows, bowing and kissing their hands in their childish way to the people, and the sight of the children made the tears start to many eyes. The Duchess of Angoulême sat in one of the carriages, silent and alone, save for a lady-in-waiting. It seemed a hard fate that condemned her once more to exile. It was the 16th of August, 1830, when they embarked for England, and it was characteristic of the duchess that she lingered longest on the deck, watching the shores of France as they receded for the last time from her sight.
The exiles landed at Weymouth, and spent two months under the hospitable roof of Cardinal Weld at Lulworth Castle. Thence they repaired to Edinburgh, where they occupied the palace of Holyrood. Thence, in the end of the year 1832, they returned to the Continent, and took up their residence in the old Hradschin palace at Prague. From Prague they removed to Goritz, and here, in the winter of 1836, Charles X. died. Eight years later the Duchess of Angoulême was left a widow.
The last years of her life were spent at Frohsdorf, a plain, somewhat uninteresting house near Neustadt, commanding a prospect over the plain which extends to the borders of Styria, which had been purchased for her from Caroline Murat, the ex-Queen of Naples, and to which she retired after her husband’s death. The Duc de Bordeaux (better known to modern readers as the Comte de Chambord) and his sister, afterwards Duchess of Parma, resided with her, and old and faithful courtiers and servants—all of whom were French—formed her household. Distinguished Frenchmen often visited Frohsdorf, and were always received graciously and kindly. In 1848 the news was brought to the duchess of the fall of Louis Philippe. “It is enough,” she said, as the story brought vividly before her the memory of another fall eighteen years before, “I dare not listen any more; we are too completely avenged.”
It was a sorrow to her that her nephew seemed content to let opportunities slip past him, and she had at last to acknowledge that he was unlikely to regain the throne of his ancestors. His training had been of a narrowing character, and he lacked the energy and the decision which, if exercised at the right time, might have led to great results.
The end came to the Duchess of Angoulême at Frohsdorf, in the autumn of 1851. Her illness lasted only two days, and she died on the 16th of October, the fifty-eighth anniversary of her mother’s execution. We may not doubt that the happiest day of her long, eventful life was that which marked its close, and re-united her at last to all those she loved. “I do not fear death,” she wrote, in her last will, “and, lacking merit of my own, I place all my trust in the mercy of God.... After the example of my parents, I pardon with my entire soul, and without exception, all those who have injured or offended me; sincerely praying God to extend to them His mercy, and to me also for the pardon of my sins. I pray God to shower down His blessings upon France—France, that I have never ceased to love under my bitterest affliction.”
She was buried, in accordance with her expressed wish, in the vault of the Franciscan Convent at Goritz, between her husband and the King, her father-in-law. In the same vault there now rest the two children over whose early years she had watched with tender care—Henri Duc de Bordeaux and Comte de Chambord, and Louise Marie Thérèse Duchess of Parma.
A few words which form the close of an article on the Duchess of Angoulême, which appeared in theGentleman’s Magazineat the time of her death, sum up her life history so concisely, that I append them here by way of conclusion:—
“Of the seventy-three years of her life, she passed eight (the best of her youth) in restraint or in a dungeon, and thirty-eight in exile, and yet she died acknowledging the mercies and the glory of God. Let us who have not known affliction, or who have been but lightly visited, derive wisdom from the instruction offered us by the pious daughter of Louis Seize and Marie Antoinette.”
R. W. R.
[THE END.]