The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X Part 6

"On the throne," says the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld," he was generous to excess. In his n.o.ble improvidence of the future, he considered his civil list as a sort of loan, made by the nation for the sake of its grandeur, to be returned in luxury, magnificence, and benefits. A faithful depositary, he made it a duty to use it all, so that, stripped of his property, he carried into exile hardly enough for the support of his family and some old servitors."

To sum up, all who figured at the court of Charles X. agree in recognizing that he was not a superior man, but a prince, chivalrous and sympathetic, honest and of good intentions, who committed grave errors, but did not deserve his misfortunes. In his appearance, in his physiognomy, in thought and language, there was a mingling of grace and dignity of which even his adversaries felt the charm. If posterity is severe for the sovereign, it will be indulgent for the man.

XI

THE DUKE OF DOUDEAUVILLE

At the time of the consecration of Charles X., the minister of the King's household was the Duke Ambroise de Doudeauville, father of the Viscount Sosthenes de La Rochefoucauld. A philanthropic n.o.bleman, devoted to the throne, the altar, the Charter, and to liberty, respectful for the past but thoughtful for the future, joining intelligent toleration to sincere piety, faithful servitor but no courtier to the King, the Duke of Doudeauville enjoyed the esteem of all and had at court a high standing, due even more to his character than to his birth. The volume of Memoirs that he has left does honor to his heart as well as to his mind. There is grace and gaiety, depth and charm, wisdom and courage, in this short but substantial book, where appears in full light one of the most distinct types of the ancient French society. "My years of grandeur and splendor," this author wrote, "have pa.s.sed like a dream, and I have beheld the awakening with pleasure. I know not what my destiny shall be. As to my conduct, I believe that I can affirm that it will be always that of an honest man, a good Frenchman, a servant of G.o.d, desiring a Christian close to an honorable life, the crown of every human edifice."

The details given by the Duke of Doudeauville as to his early years are very characteristic. He was born in 1765. He was entrusted to the care of a nurse living two leagues from Paris in a little village, the wife of a post-rider. His parents, when they came to see him, found "their eighteen-months-old progeny astride of one of the horses of his foster-father." Like Henry IV., he was raised roughly, leading the life of a real peasant, running the day long, in sabots, through the snow and ice and mud. "My nurse, who was retained as maid," he says, "was a good peasant, and thoroughly proletarian. Afterwards, transferred to the capital, she there preserved with her simple cap her frank and rustic manners, to the admiration of all who knew her, and esteemed her loyal character and her plain ways. It is to her, and to her alone, that I am indebted for receiving any religious instruction either in infancy or youth. Everything about me was wholly foreign to those ideas; my religion was none the less fervent for that. From my earliest years, being born brave, I felt the vocation of the martyr the most desirable means of being joined to our Father which is in Heaven, and I have always thought that to end one's days for one's G.o.d, one's wife and family, was a touching and enviable death."

The Duke of Doudeauville was still a child, and a little child--in point of age he was fourteen and a day, in size he was four feet seven inches--when he was married. He espoused Mademoiselle de Montmirail, of the family of Louvois, who brought him, with a beauty he did not then prize, a considerable fortune, the rank of grandee of Spain, and, worth more than all, rare and precious qualities. Nevertheless, the little husband was very sad. When his approaching marriage was announced to him, he cried out, "Then I can play no longer!" When, after the first interview, he was asked how he liked his fiancee, whose fresh face, oval and full, was charming, he responded: "She is really very beautiful; she looks like me when I am eating plums." Listen to his story of the nuptials. "Imagine my extreme embarra.s.sment," he says, "my stupid disappointment, with my excessive bashfulness amid the numerous concourse of visitors and spectators attracted by our wedding. The grandfather of Mademoiselle de Montmirail, being captain of the Hundred-Swiss, a great part of this corps was there, and, as if to play me a trick, all these Hundred-Swiss were six feet tall, sometimes more.

One would have said, seeing me by the side of them, the giants and the dwarf of the fair. Every one gazed at the bride, who, although she was only fifteen, was as tall as she was beautiful, and every one was looking for the bridegroom, without suspecting that it was this child, this schoolboy, who was to play the part."

Is it not amusing, this picture of a marriage under the old regime? The little groom was so disturbed when he went to the chapel and during the ceremony, that, though his memory was excellent, he never could recall what pa.s.sed at that time. "I only remember," he says, "the sound of the drums that were beating during our pa.s.sage, and cheered me a little; it was the one moment of the day that was to my taste. How long that day seemed! You may imagine it was not from the motives common in like cases, but because I drew all glances upon me, and all vied in laughing at and joking me, pointing their fingers at me."

The day ended with a grand repast that lasted two or three hours. A crowd of strangers strolled around the table all the while. Although the precaution had been taken to put an enormous cus.h.i.+on on the chair of the husband, his chin hardly came above the table. Seated by the side of his young wife, he did not dare look at her. For days beforehand he had been wondering if he should always be afraid of her.

"After this solemn banquet," he adds, "came the soiree, which did not seem any more amusing; after the soiree the return to my parents' home was no more diverting; nevertheless, it was made in the company of my dear spouse, who henceforth was to dwell at my father's house. They bundled me into a wretched cabriolet with my preceptor, and sent me to finish my education at Versailles, and to learn to ride at the riding-school of the pages."

We must note that the marriage thus begun was afterwards a very happy union, and that there was never a pair more virtuous and more attached to each other than the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Doudeauville.

In 1789, the Duke was major of the Second Regiment of Cha.s.seurs. He emigrated, though the Emigration was not at all to his liking. "This measure," he said, "appeared to me in every way unreasonable, and yet, to my great chagrin, I was forced to submit to it. The person of the King was menaced, right-thinking people compromised, the tranquillity and prosperity of France lost; they were arming abroad, it was said, to provide a remedy for these evils. The n.o.bles hastened hither. Distaffs were sent to all who refused to rally on the banks of the Rhine. How, at twenty-five, could one resist this tide of opinion?" When he perceived, in the foreign powers, the design of profiting by the discords in France instead of putting an end to them, he laid aside his arms, and never resumed them during the eight years of the Emigration.

"This resolve," he said, "was consistent with my principles. Always a good Frenchman, I desired only the good of my country, the happiness of my fellow-countrymen; my whole life, I hope, has been a proof of this view. All my actions have tended to this end."

During his eight years of emigration, the Duke of Doudeauville was constantly a prey to anxiety, grief, poverty, trials of every kind.

Thirteen of his relatives were put to death under the Terror. His wife was imprisoned, and escaped the scaffold only through the 9th Thermidor. He himself, having visited France clandestinely several times, ran the greatest risks. In the midst of such sufferings his sole support was the a.s.sistance of a devoted servant. "At the moment that I write these lines," he says in his Memoirs, "I am about to lose my domestic Raphael, the excellent man who, for fifty years, has given me such proofs of fidelity, disinterestedness, and delicacy; I have treated him as a friend; I shall grieve for him as for a brother."

Misfortune had fortified the character of the Duke of Doudeauville.

Unlike other emigres, he had learned much and forgotten nothing. His att.i.tude under the Consulate and the Empire was that of a true patriot.--Without joining the Opposition, he wished no favor. The sole function he accepted was that of councillor-general of the Department of the Marne, where he could be useful to his fellow-citizens without giving any one the right to accuse him of ambitious motives. Nothing would have been easier for him than to be named to one of the high posts in the court of Napoleon, whose defects he disapproved, but whose great qualities he admired. "Bonaparte," he said in his Memoirs, "had monarchical ideas and made much of the n.o.bility, especially that which he called historic. I must confess, whatever may be said, that the latter under his reign was more esteemed, respected, feted, than it has been since under Louis XVIII. or Charles X. The princes feared to excite toward it and toward themselves the envy of the bourgeois cla.s.ses, who would have no supremacy but their own. Napoleon, on the contrary, having frankly faced the difficulty, created a n.o.bility of his own. Those who belonged to it, or hoped to, found it quite reasonable that they should be given as peers the descendants of the first houses of France." The d.u.c.h.ess of Doudeauville was a sister of the Countess of Montesquiou, who was governess of the King of Rome, and whose husband had replaced the Prince de Talleyrand as Grand Chamberlain of the Emperor. Very intimate with the Count and Countess, the Duke of Doudeauville had some trouble in avoiding the favors of Napoleon, who held him in high esteem. He found a way to decline them without wounding the susceptibilities of the powerful sovereign.

Under the Restoration, the Duke of Doudeauville distinguished himself by an honest liberalism, loyal and intelligent, with nothing revolutionary in it, and by an enlightened philanthropy that won him the respect of all parties. When he was named as director of the post-office in 1822, many people of his circle blamed him for taking a place beneath him. "Congratulate me," he said, laughing, "that I have not been offered that of postman; I should have taken it just the same if I had thought I could be useful." And he added: "It was thought that it would be a sinecure for me. Far from that, I gave myself up wholly to my new employment, and I worked so hard at it, than in less than a year my eyes, previously excellent, were almost ruined. I always occupied fifteen or twenty places, each more gratuitous than the others. To make the religion that I practise beloved and to serve my neighbor, has always seemed to me the best way to serve G.o.d. So I believe that I can say without fear of contradiction that I have never done any one harm, and that I have always tried to do all the good possible."

In the month of August, 1824, the Duke of Doudeauville was named minister of the King's household. In this post he showed administrative qualities of a high order. In April, 1827, not wis.h.i.+ng to share in a measure that he regarded as both inappropriate and unpopular, the disbanding of the Parisian National Guard, he gave in his resignation.

"I did not wish," he said, "to join the Opposition. The popularity given me by my resignation would have a.s.sured me a prominent place, but this role agreed neither with my character nor with my antecedents. I resolved on absolute silence and complete obscurity; I even avoided showing myself in Paris, where I knew that manifestations of satisfaction and grat.i.tude would be given to me." King Louis Philippe said one day to Marshal Gerard: "Had they listened to the Duke of Doudeauville, and not broken up the National Guard of Paris, the revolution would not have taken place."

The great lord, good citizen, and good Christian, who, at periods most disturbed by changes of regime, had always been as firm in the application of his principles as he was moderate in his actions and gentle in his method, made himself as much respected under Louis Philippe as under the Restoration. During the cholera, he set the example of absolute devotion and was constantly in the hospitals. He continued to sit in the Chamber of Peers until the close of the trial of the Ministers, in the hope of saving the servitors of Charles X. But when Louis Philippe quitted the Palais Royal to install himself at the Tuileries, he resigned as Peer of France. He no longer wished to reappear at the Chateau where he had seen Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and in a letter to the Queen Marie-Amelie, who had a real veneration for him, he wrote: "My presence at the Tuileries would be out of place, and even the new hosts of that palace would be astonished at it." The Duke of Doudeauville, who died at a great age, in 1841, devoted his last years to good works, to charity, to the benevolent establishments of which he was the president. One day at the Hotel de Ville, he drew applause from an a.s.sembly far from religious, by the words we are about to cite, because they discovered in them his whole mind and heart: "A husband would like a wife reserved, economical, a good housekeeper, an excellent mother for his family, charming, eager to please him--him only, adorning herself with virtue, the one ornament that is never ruinous, having great gentleness for him, great strength as against all others; he would wish, in fine, a perfect wife. I should like to believe that there are many such, especially among my listeners, but I should think it a miracle if one of them united all these qualities without having the principles of religion. A woman, pretty, witty, agreeable, would like her husband to think she was so, that he should be as amiable for her, or almost, as for those he saw for the first time; that he should not keep his ill humor and his brusqueness for his home and lavish his care and attention on society; that he should forget sometimes that he is a master,--in some ways a despotic master,--despite the liberalism of the century and the progress of philosophy; that he should be willing to be a friend, even if he ceased to be a lover; finally, that he should not seek from others what he will more surely find at home. Let this tender wife invoke religion, let her cause her husband to love it, let her win him to it; she will get what she hopes for and thank me for the recipe."

Our lady readers will thank us, we hope, for having spoken of a man who gives them such good advice; and it is with pleasure that we have taken the occasion to render homage to the memory of a great lord, who doubly deserved the t.i.tle, by the elevation of his ideas and the n.o.bility of his sentiments. Such men--alas! they are rare--would have saved the Restoration if the Restoration could have been saved.

XII

THE HOUSEHOLD OF THE d.u.c.h.eSS OF BERRY

We shall now, commencing with the ladies, throw a rapid glance over the persons who, at the time of the consecration, formed the household of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry. The Princess had one lady of honor, one lady of the bedchamber, and eleven lady companions, of whom three were honorary. All were distinguished as much by their manners and sentiments as by birth and education.

The lady of honor was the Marechale Oudinot, d.u.c.h.ess of Reggio, a lady of the highest rank, who joined a large heart to a firm mind. Attached, through her family, to the religious and monarchical principles of the old regime, by her marriage to the glories of the imperial epic, she represented at the court the ideas of pacification and fusion that inspired the policy of Louis XVIII. Born in 1791, of Antoine de Coucy, captain in the regiment of Artois, and of Gabrielle de Mersuay, she was but two years old when her father and mother were thrown into the dungeons of the Terror. Carried in the arms of a faithful serving-woman, she visited the two prisoners, who escaped death. She married one of Napoleon's most ill.u.s.trious companions in arms, the "modern Bayard," as he was called, the Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio, who had received thirty-two wounds on the field of battle, and who, by securing the pa.s.sage of Beresina, deserved to be called the "saviour of the army." He was wounded at the close of the Russian campaign. Then his young wife crossed all Europe to go and care for him and saved him.

She was but twenty. She was only twenty-four when Louis XVIII. named her lady of honor to the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry. Despite her extreme youth, she filled her delicate functions with exquisite tact and precocious wisdom, and from the first exercised a happy influence over the mind of the Princess, who gladly listened to her counsels. Very active in work, the lady of honor busied herself with untiring zeal with the details of her charge. She was the directress, the secretary, the factotum, of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry. The Abbe Tripied, who p.r.o.nounced her funeral eulogy at Bar-le-Duc, May 21st, 1868, traced a very lifelike portrait of her.

Let us hear the ecclesiastic witness of the high virtues of this truly superior woman.

"She bore," he said, "with equal force and sagacity her t.i.tles of lady of honor and d.u.c.h.ess of Reggio. Proud of her blason, where were crossed the arms of the old and of the new n.o.bility, and where she saw, as did the King, a sign, as it were, of reconciliation and peace, she bore it high and firm, and defended it in its new glories, against insulting attacks. An ornament to the court, by her graces and her high distinction, she displayed there, for the cause of the good, all the resources of her mind and the riches of her heart. But none of the seductions and agitations she met there disturbed the limpidity of her pure soul. Malignity, itself at bay, was forced to recognize and avow that in the d.u.c.h.ess of Reggio no other stain could be found than the ink-stains she sometimes allowed her pen to make upon her finger. In her greatness, this n.o.ble woman saw, before all, the side of duty."

In 1832, when the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry was imprisoned in the citadel of Blaye, her former lady of honor asked, without being able to obtain that favor, the privilege of sharing her captivity. The d.u.c.h.ess of Reggio to the last set an example of devotion and of all the virtues.

She was so gracious and affable that one day some one remarked: "When the d.u.c.h.ess gives you advice, it seems as if she were asking a service of you." When the n.o.ble lady died, April 18th, 1868, at Bar-le-Duc, where her good works and her intelligent charity had made her beloved, they wished to give her name to one of the streets of the city, and as they already had the Rue Oudinot and the Place Reggio, one of the streets was called the Rue de La Marechale.

The lady of the bedchamber of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry and her lady companions all belonged to the old aristocracy. The Countess of Noailles, lady of the bedchamber, a woman full of intelligence, and very beautiful, a mother worthy of all praise, was the daughter of the Duke de Talleyrand, the niece of the Prince de Talleyrand, the wife of Count Just de Noailles, second son of the Prince of Poix.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Berry had eight lady companions: the Countess of Bouille, the Countess d'Hautefort, the Marchioness of Bethisy, the Marchioness of Gourgues, the Countess of Casteja, the Countess of Rosanbo, the Marchioness of Podenas; and three whose t.i.tle was honorary, the Marchioness of Lauriston, the Countess Charles de Gontaut, and the Countess de La Rochejaquelein.

The Countess of Bouille, who at the time of the coronation of Charles X. was about forty years old, was a creole, very agreeable and much respected.

The Countess d'Hautefort, nee Maille-Latour-Landry, forty-one years old, married to a colonel who belonged to the fourth company of the bodyguards, was a woman of much intelligence, charmingly natural, and an excellent musician. She shared in 1832 the captivity of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry.

Very distinguished in manner and sentiment as in birth, the Marchioness Charles de Bethisy, married to a lieutenant-general and peer of France; the Countess of Gourgues, nee Montboissier, married to a master of requests, a deputy; the Countess of Mefflay, a young and charming woman, daughter of the Countess of Latour, whom the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry had as governess in the Two Sicilies, and wife of the Count Meffray, receiver-general of Gers; the Viscountess of Casteja, daughter of the Marquis of Bombelles, major-general, amba.s.sador of Louis XVI. at Lisbon and Vienna, then priest, Canon of Breslau, Bishop of Amiens, First Almoner of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry (he died in 1822, and one of his sons, Charles de Bombelles, married morganatically the Empress Marie-Louise, in 1833); the Countess of Rosanbo, daughter of the Count of Mesnard; the Marchioness of Podenas, wife of a lieutenant-colonel; the Marchioness of Lauriston, wife of the marshal, formerly lady of the palace to the Empress Josephine and the Empress Marie-Louise; the Countess Charles de Gontaut, whose husband was chamberlain of the Emperor, a very young and very pretty woman, remarkable for the vivacity of her mind; the Countess de La Rochejaquelein, nee Duras, a very pious and very charitable woman, whose husband was a major-general. In fact, the circle around the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry was perfection. The greatest ladies of France were by her side, and the society of the Pet.i.t Chateau, as the Pavilion de Marsan was called, was certainly fitted to give the tone to the princ.i.p.al salons of Paris.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Berry had as chevalier d'honneur a great lord, very learned, known for his unchangeable devotion to royalty, the Duke de Sevis (born in 1755, died in 1830). The Duke, who emigrated and was wounded at Quiberon, held himself apart during the Empire, and published highly esteemed writings on finance, some Memoirs, and a Recueil de Souvenirs et Portraits. He was a peer of France and member of the French Academy. For adjunct to the chevalier d'honneur, the d.u.c.h.ess had the Count Emmanuel de Brissac, one of the finest characters of the court, married to a Montmorency.

Her first equerry was the Count Charles de Mesnard, a Vendean gentleman of proven devotion. The Count Charles de Mesnard was born at Lugon, in 1769, the same year as Napoleon, whose fellow-pupil he was at Brienne.

Belonging to one of those old houses of simple gentlemen who have the antiquity of the greatest races, he was son of a major-general who distinguished himself in the Seven Years War, and who at the close of the old regime was gentleman of the chamber of the Count of Provence (Louis XVIII.), and captain of the Guards of the Gate of this Prince.

He emigrated, and served in the ranks of the army of Conde, with his older brother, the Count Edouard de Mesnard, married to Mademoiselle de Caumont-Laforce, daughter of the former governess of the children of the Count d'Artois (Charles X.), and sister of the Countess of Balbi.

The Count Edouard de Mesnard, having entered Paris secretly, was shot there as emigre, October 27th, 1797, despite all the efforts of the wife of General Bonaparte to save him. When he was going to his death, his eyes met, on the boulevard, those of one of his friends, the Marquis of Galard, who had returned with him secretly. The condemned man had the presence of mind to seem not to recognize the pa.s.ser-by, and the latter was saved, as he himself related with emotion sixty years afterward.

At the commencement of the Empire, the Count Charles de Mesnard was living at London, where he was reduced to gaining his living by copying music, when the Emperor offered to restore his confiscated property if he would come to France and unite with the new regime. The Count of Mesnard preferred to remain in England near the Duke of Berry, who showed great affection for him. The Restoration compensated the faithful companion of exile. He was a peer of France and Charles X.

treated him as a friend. He had married, during the Emigration, an English lady, Mrs. Sarah Mason, widow of General Blondell, by whom he had a daughter, Aglae, who was named a lady companion to the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry, at the time of her marriage, in 1825, with the Count Ludovic de Rosanbo, and a son, Ferdinand, married in 1829, to Mademoiselle de Bellissen.

The Princess had for equerry-de-main, the Viscount d'Hanache; for honorary equerry, the Baron of Fontanes; for equerry porte-manteau, M.

Gory. Her secretary of orders was the Marquis de Sa.s.senay, who bore, besides, the t.i.tle of Administrator of the Finances and Treasurer of Madame. He had under his orders a controller-general, M. Michals, who was of such integrity and devotion that when, after the Revolution of July, he presented himself at Holyrood to give in his accounts to the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry, she made him a present of her portrait.

There was not a private household in France where more order reigned than in that of Madame. The chief of each service,--the d.u.c.h.ess of Reggio, the Viscount Just de Noailles, the Count Emmanuel de Brissac, and the Count of Mesnard, presented his or her budget and arranged the expenditures in advance with the Princess. This budget being paid by twelfths before the 15th of the following month, she required to have submitted to her the receipts of the month past. This did not prevent Madame from being exceedingly generous. One day she learned that a poor woman had just brought three children into the world and knew not how to pay for three nurses, three layettes, three cradles. Instantly she wished to relieve her. But it was the end of the month; the money of all the services had been spent.

"Lend me something," she said to the controller-general of her household; "you will trust me; no one will trust this unfortunate woman."

As M. Nettement remarked: "The d.u.c.h.ess of Berry held it as a principle that princes should be like the sun which draws water from the streams only to return it in dew and rain. She considered her civil list as the property of all, administered by her. She was to be seen at all expositions and in all the shops, buying whatever was offered that was most remarkable. Sometimes she kept these purchases, sometimes she sent them to her family at Naples, Vienna, Madrid, and her letters used warmly to recommend in foreign cities whatever was useful or beautiful in France. She was thus in every way the Providence of the arts, of industry, and commerce."

To sum up, the household of the d.u.c.h.ess of Berry worked to perfection, and Madame, always affable and good, inspired a profound devotion in all about her.

XIII