France in the Nineteenth Century. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer
the same road full of life, strength, and happiness. … Thus we carried him, and laid him down in our dear little chapel, where four days before he had heard mass with the whole family."
[Footnote 1: Marshal Gérard was then mourning for his son.]
The death of the Duke of Orleans was the severest blow that could have fallen on Louis Philippe, not only as a father, but as head of a dynasty. The duke left two infant sons—the Comte de Paris and the Duc de Chartres. The former is now both the Orleanist and Legitimist pretender, to the French throne.
In the early part of 1845 Louis Philippe, who had already visited Windsor and been cordially received there, was visited in return at his Château d'Eu by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, accompanied by Lord Aberdeen, then English Minister for Foreign Affairs. The king's reception of the young queen was most paternal. He kissed her like a father, and did everything in his power to make her visit pleasant. Among the subjects discussed during the visit was the question of "the Spanish marriages."
The unfortunate Queen of Spain, Isabella II., was just sixteen years old; her sister, the Infanta Luisa, was a year younger. Isabella was the daughter of a vicious race, and with such a mother as she had in Queen Christina, she had grown up to early womanhood utterly ignorant and untrained. One of her ministers said of her that "no one could be astonished that she had vices, but the wonder was that she had by nature so many good qualities." Jolly, kindly, generous, a rebel against etiquette, and an habitual breaker of promises, she was long popular in Spain, in spite of a career of dissoluteness only equalled by that of Catherine of Russia.
In 1846, however, she had not shown this tendency, and in the hands of a good husband might have made as good a wife and as respectable a woman as her sister Luisa has since proved.
There were many candidates for the honor of Queen Isabella's hand. Louis Philippe sent his sons D'Aumale and Montpensier to Madrid to try their fortunes; but England objected strongly to an alliance which might make Spain practically a part of France. The candidature of the French princes was therefore withdrawn.
A prince of the Catholic branch of the Coburgs was then proposed—Prince Ferdinand, who made subsequently an excellent king-consort in Portugal; but to him France objected, as too nearly allied to the English Crown. Finally the suitors were reduced to three—the queen's cousin Enrique (Henry), a rough sailor of rather radical opinions and turbulent ways; the Comte de Trepani, a Neapolitan prince, a man of small understanding; and another cousin, Don Francisco d'Assis, a creature weak alike in mind and body, whom it was an outrage to think of as fit mate for a young queen. England was willing to consent to the queen's marrying anyone of these princes, and also that the Duc de Montpensier should marry the Infanta Luisa, provided that the queen was first married and had had a child. All this was fully agreed upon in the conference at Eu. But Christina, the queen-mother, who had been plundering the Spanish treasury till she had accumulated an enormous fortune, offered, if Louis Philippe would use his influence to prevent any inquiry into the state of her affairs, to further his views as to the Duc de Montpensier.
It seems more like a scene in the Middle Ages than an actual transaction in our own century, that at midnight, in a Spanish palace, a dissolute Italian dowager and a French ambassador should have been engaged in coercing a sovereign of sixteen into a detested marriage. As morning dawned, the sobbing girl had given her consent to marry Don Francisco, and the ambassador of Louis Philippe, pale from the excitement of his vigil, left the palace to send word of his disgraceful victory to his master. The Duc de Montpensier, who was in waiting on the frontier, soon arrived in Madrid, and Isabella and Luisa were married on the same day; while M. Guizot, who was head of the French Government, and Louis Philippe excused their breach of faith to the queen of England by saying that Queen Isabella was married before her sister, though on the same morning.
Isabella at once banished her unwelcome husband to a country seat, and flung herself headlong into disgraceful excesses.
Queen Victoria was greatly hurt by the treachery displayed by Louis Philippe and his minister, and doubtless, as a woman she was deeply sorry for the young queen. Louis Philippe not only lost credit, popularity, and the support he derived from the personal friendship of the Queen and the Prince Consort of England, but he obtained no chance of the throne of Spain for his son by his wicked devices; for Queen Isabella, far from being childless, had three daughters and a son. The latter, subsequently Alfonso XII., married, in spite of much opposition, his lovely cousin Mercedes, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier. She died a few months after her marriage, so that no son or grandson of Louis Philippe will be permitted by Providence to mount the Spanish throne.
The affair of the Spanish marriages, the quarrel it involved with Queen Victoria, and the loss to Louis Philippe of personal honor, had a great effect upon him; he became irritable and obstinate, and at the same time weak of will.
Troubles multiplied around him. Things with which he had nothing whatever to do increased his unpopularity, and the secret societies kept discontents alive. Everything that went wrong in France was charged upon the king and the royal family.
One of the great families in France was that of Choiseul-Praslin. The head of it in Louis Philippe's time was a duke who had married Fanny, daughter of Marshal Sébastiani, an old officer of Napoleon and a great favorite with Louis Philippe. The Duc de Praslin had given in his adhesion to the Orleans dynasty, while so many old families stood aloof, and was in consequence made an officer in the Duchess of Orleans' household. The Duc and Duchesse de Praslin had ten children. The duchess was a stout, matronly little woman, rather pretty, with strong affections and a good deal of sentiment. Several times she had had cause to complain of her husband, and did complain somewhat vehemently to her own family; but their matrimonial differences had always been made up by Marshal Sébastiani. The world considered them a happy married pair.
After seventeen years of married life a governess was engaged for the nine daughters, a Mademoiselle Henriette de Luzy. She was a Parisian by birth, but had been educated in England, had English connections, and spoke English fluently. She was one of those women who make a favorable impression upon everyone brought into personal contact with them. Soon the children adored her, and it was not long before the duke had come under the same spell. The duchess found herself completely isolated in her own household; husband and children had alike gone over to this stranger. The duchess wrote pathetic letters to her husband, pleading her own affection for him, and her claims as a wife and a mother. These letters no doubt exasperated the duke, but we read them with deep pity for her whose heart they lay bare.
It is to be understood that there was apparently no scandal—that is, scandal in the usual sense—in the relations between the duke and Mademoiselle de Luzy. She had simply bewitched a weak man who had grown tired of his wife, and had cast the same spell over his children; and she had not the superiority of character which would have led her to throw up a lucrative situation because she was making a wife and mother (whom doubtless she considered very unreasonable) extremely unhappy.
At last things came to such a pass that Madame de Praslin appealed to her father, insisting on a legal separation from her husband. The marshal intervened, and the affair was compromised. Mademoiselle de Luzy was to be honorably discharged, and the duchess was to renounce her project of separation. Mademoiselle de Luzy therefore gave up her situation, and went to board in a pension in Paris with her old schoolmistress. Madame de Praslin went to her country house, the magnificent Château de Vaux, where she herself undertook the education of her children; but in their estimation she by no means replaced Mademoiselle de Luzy, whom from time to time they visited in company with their father.
In the middle of the summer of 1847 it was arranged that the whole family should go to the seaside, and they came up to Paris to pass one night in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré at the Hôtel Sébastiani. Like most French establishments, the Hôtel Sébastiani was divided between the marshal and his daughter, the old marshal occupying one floor during the winter, the duke and duchess, with their family, the one above it, while the servants of both establishments had their sleeping-rooms under the roof. The house was of gray stone, standing back in a yard; the French call such a situation entre cour et jardin. The duke had been in Paris several times during the previous week, and had occupied his own rooms,