IV
Fresh Investigations—Count Borghi’s Letters—The Baths of Lucca—Intimacy of the Duke of Orleans and the Marchioness of B.—Loan—The Chevalier Montara—Letter to the Duc de Bourbon—Various Publications—The Lawyer Courtilly—Archives of Genoa—Conduct of the Governor—Tomaso Chiappini’s Libel—Refusal of the Printers—Vain Attempts—The Bishop of Faenza—Letter from the Cape of Good Hope.
One important fact had been argued and settled, namely, that of my substitution; and thenceforth it would be incontestable that my parents were the Comte and Comtesse de Joinville, and French. But who were this couple, and where were they? The uncertainty about this was insupportable to me now, and I was inspired with fresh courage to renew the struggle.
Greatly wishing, if possible, to discover the nurse who had suckled the jailer’s son, I had notices put up in several towns that a large reward would be given to any one who could give me news of her.
I wrote about this matter to Count Borghi, and at the same time reproached him somewhat for having omitted, on examination, to add to his first declaration what he had come to Ravenna to tell me.
This was his answer—
“Honoured Lady,
“It is enough for me that you are pleased with what I have done, and if you keep your goodwill for me, my delight will be complete.
“You must never doubt of our everlasting remembrance of you, whom we love and esteem for your rare and excellent qualities. I have heard how much vexed you were by the ignorance of the copyists; I could not have believed they could be so stupid and illiterate; but the Bishop will have all that remedied.
“All these unlooked-for difficulties must have worried you and delay our progress still more; I am truly sorry for it, and if I could have foreseen it, I would have offered to make the copies myself.
“During my examination I answered every question put to me, and I wanted to add what I told you at Ravenna; but I was told that, as that could not strengthen my deposition, it was useless to include it in the case. I did not fail to ask the sisters Bandini if they had not still got some remains of the correspondence between the Countess Camilla and the Comte de Joinville, but they always answered that they had absolutely nothing left of it.
“And that must be true; for if they possessed any of your parents’ letters they would have thought of making something out of them to relieve their poverty.
“Your nurse at Modigliana was the mother of a woman who is still alive; as to that of the exchanged boy, no one has been able to give me news of her; and prudence would have prevented the author of so atrocious a crime from choosing her about here, and also from leaving any trace of the direction in which the Comtesse de Joinville, with her attendants, went.
“I will go to Modigliana shortly, where I will make it my duty to make every possible inquiry, as you desire; but I greatly fear they will be fruitless, like those of so many others whom you employed before me, amongst whom was the Signore Ragazzini, who took immense trouble.
“I think I have now answered all the questions in your letter, which I received from your courier, from whom we heard, to our great delight, that you and your beloved Edward, to whom we send our best love, are in perfect health. Your friend[6] swears an eternal affection for you; she joins with me in wishing you the greatest success and a full recovery of your sacred rights.
“Believe, honoured lady, that my protestations of respect and attachment could not be more sincere; and I can flatter myself that, from the moment I made your personal acquaintance, I was, and shall always be, proud to be your humble and devoted servant, as well as your very affectionate friend.
“Nicholas Borghi-Biancoli.”
After so much anxiety, worry and fatigue, I felt the greatest need of rest, and my dear Marchioness of B. having most luckily told me that she was at the baths of Lucca, I hastened to throw myself into her loving arms there.
She told me that, about six weeks after my going to Paris, she had written the Duke of Orleans a second letter of introduction for me, and said that she had been much surprised that that Prince had not acknowledged its receipt, and had not even taken the trouble to thank her for the news she had given him of her daughter’s marriage to Lord S.
For it is as well to know that, during the time of their exile, the Duke and his two brothers[7] had received from Mr. C., the Marchioness’s father, an annual pension of £200 and permi to dine with him as often as they pleased.
THE DUKE OF ORLEANS
The Marquess of B. had given them a similar invitation, and had offered them the use of a country house a short distance from London.
The Duc de Montpensier, filled with gratitude, was so greatly attached to him that he had himself carried to him just before his death, saying that he must go to give an eternal farewell to his best friend.
This Prince having died of consumption at the age of thirty-two, the unfortunate Comte de Beaujolais, already attacked by the same disease, was taken by his elder brother to a milder climate, and died at Malta during his twenty-eighth year.
On his return to England, the present Duke applied once more to Mr. C. and the Marquess of B. and obtained fresh favours and assistance, to supply, as he said, the needs of his mother and sister.
A short time after the Restoration, the Marchioness being in Paris, he went to see her, thanked her for all her good offices, vowed eternal gratitude to her and pressed her to go to spend a few days at Neuilly. Her health prevented her from yielding to his gracious entreaties or those of the Duchess, who also showed her great kindness; but from that time there began a very friendly and almost fraternal correspondence between the Duke and my friend, which was interrupted only by the sending of the letter concerning me.
I could easily explain to my friend the cause of this silence, by telling her of all that had happened since I had had the happiness of seeing her.
The enormous expenses I had incurred had exhausted my funds, and I asked her to be so good as to advance me something.
At first she refused, pleading that her intimacy with the Duke would not allow her to provide weapons against him; but my arguments, and still more her own love for me, little by little convinced her, and she ended by lending me the sum I needed.
With scrupulous delicacy she informed my adversary of this, assuring him that it was solely to give me the power of paying off my old debts and not with the intention of helping me to make war on him.
Instead of a direct answer to so expansive a confidence, a thousand tortuous ways were taken to convince my friend that my claims were nothing but a tissue of lies, and everything possible was done to deprive me of her affection.
But her never-failing answer was: “Let her ideas be true or false, my heart will always be with one whom I love like another self.”
As soon as I had somewhat recovered, I went to Genoa, so as to be more within reach of news from France, whither I had made up my mind to send a certain Chevalier Montara whom a lady in Lucca had described as being a very clever man. I gave him my instructions and £300 sterling, for the journey as well as for the investigations he would have to make, and ordered him to submit the whole thing to his Majesty Louis XVIII.
His first letters were very encouraging, and they came pretty frequently; soon they became rarer and rarer; he tried to arouse fears in me; he pleaded serious illness, squandered my money, and, in fact, did nothing for me.
About this time, I was reminded that the Duc de Bourbon-Condé, during his misfortunes, had received much civility from Lord Newborough’s relations. Delighted at this reminiscence, I thought I might take the liberty of writing a very respectful and touching letter to His Highness, begging him to give me his advice.
My letter was delivered, opened, and having been looked at, was ignominiously returned to the person who had undertaken to take it.
The secretary who gave it back to him censured my action, accused me of audacity, and treated my business as a chimerical delusion.
After this disappointment I was advised to have recourse to Madame la Dauphine.
A literary man of high reputation undertook to draw up my petition after the most proper fashion; but when he came to read it to me, I must confess that it seemed to me far from likely to convince any one of the truth, especially at a time so fertile in impostors.
Despite the doubts which I thought might be caused by my ignorance of a language that was still almost unknown to me, I decided to have it presented by a gentleman residing in Paris, who, at the end of three weeks wrote that he must not again be given such commissions; that he had been asked several questions he could not answer, and that he had found himself, without any manner of doubt, under the special observance of the police.
This fresh worry was all the more trying since my stay in Genoa was disturbed by a multitude of other anxieties.
Not content with distributing copies of the judgment given at Faenza, I had an article inserted in a newspaper[8] containing a summary of my case, in which I asked for fresh information concerning my father and mother, whom I designated only by the initial J.
No one could believe that they were simply nobles; everybody was whispering august names; but as the Orleans family was allied with all the reigning families of Italy, fear seized upon all hearts and closed all lips.
Only one man made his appearance: a former magistrate who had known old Chiappini well.
As a matter of fact, his evidence would have been much more useful to me before the verdict given in my favour, but at least it will serve to confirm it. Let us listen to it.
“I, the undersigned, certify and declare what follows, on my soul and conscience—
“In the year 1808, having sent in my resignation of the post of substitute of the Attorney-General in the Criminal Court of the department called that of the Apennines, I retired to Florence, where I lived until the month of April 1813, the date of my departure for Rome. At the beginning of my residence in the first of these two towns, I made the acquaintance of Lorenzo Chiappini, with whom I sometimes dined at the house of the doctor, Pietro Salvi. In 1810, I met him, with other Florentines, in the immense house of the old Chartreuse, where, like me, he had hired rooms to spend the summer in. The more we saw of each other the more intimate and familiar became our intercourse, especially on his side.
“Very soon he told me the most minute details of a journey he had made to London to see one of his daughters, married, he said, to a rich English lord who had fallen in love with her on hearing her sing in a theatre.
“He could not say enough about the splendour of his son-in-law’s house, nor of the welcome he had received there; told me some coarse stories about Great Britain; described the manners of the inhabitants; constantly repeated that all his happiness lay in that darling daughter, and assured me that he would give the world to procure the pleasure of seeing her again.
“The next year he was attacked by some slight malady, and one day, as I went to see him pretty frequently, he confessed to me that he had a great burden on his conscience. I tried in vain to make him listen to some words of comfort; nothing could cure his melancholy.
“Another time, the talk having turned on the same subject, I said that if he had not been guilty of theft—a sin God does not pardon without restitution—all else could be expiated by repentance. At that he made a clean breast of everything, and confided to me that, having been in his youth keeper of the prisons at Modigliana, he exchanged his firstborn son for the daughter of a foreign nobleman, and that it was that daughter who was married in London, and that he should feel never-ending regret for so having helped to deprive her of her birthright.
“Having strongly advised him to reveal such a secret to his generous benefactress, who must most certainly rejoice over it because of the honour and profit it would bring her, he said that he had already thought of doing so, and only wanted to avoid any sort of fuss during his life; but he should manage so that everything should be discovered after his death. He added that this seemed sufficient reparation due to the lady, considering her present condition of grandeur and opulence.
“He talked after the same fashion to me on several other occasions, and I always found him fixed in that resolve.
“This is what I heard from Chiappini’s own lips, and I am prepared to confirm it, if necessary, legally and by oath.
“In testimony whereof,
“Louis Courtilly,
“Lawyer.”
This very clear and precise deposition was far from compensating me for all the disagreeables brought upon me by my harmless advertisements.
Researches made in the Public Archives of the town I was living in brought to light almost nothing about the year 1773; the Keeper of the Records declared that the books relating to that period had been put together in a place I must not enter without special permission, and where, he told me, memorandums of great importance were kept.
But it was impossible to get anything out of the Governor, who was my sworn enemy.
The day after the appearance of my article he had severely reprimanded the journalist I had employed.
He often gave balls, concerts and entertainments of all kinds, to which all the English ladies, from those of high rank down to the wives of the smallest tradespeople, were invited; I alone was deprived of this immense honour.
One day he went so far as to express to my banker the greatest desire for my speedy departure. “I am ordered,” he said, “to keep the strictest watch over her.”
My banker replying that he could not understand the reason of it, since all I was doing was in order to discover a Comte and Comtesse Joinville—
“Yes,” said this officious governor; “but it isn’t very easy to prove that this Count and Countess are no other than the former Duke and Duchess of Chartres?”
But that was not all.
Fifteen days after the appearance of my article in the Gazetta di Genova, my ex-brother, the advocate Chiappini, sent me by post a so-called answer he had had put into the public papers, boasting of having obtained the permission of the Government. Adorned with all the flowers of speech an infamous pen could indite, such a libel was well worthy of its author.
Although my reputation stood immeasurably high above his insults, at first I wanted to answer them.
The first printer I spoke to refused his services, under the pretext that he had received orders in the matter; I had successive recourse to several others, who all likewise put me off. Not only at Genoa, but at Florence, Bologna and Alessandria—everywhere they had been threatened with severe penalties in case of disobedience.
Tomaso Chiappini had not confined himself to spreading atrocious calumnies against me; I heard that he was accusing my witnesses of imposture, and that several of them, alarmed by the sinister rumours he circulated, and believing themselves irretrievably ruined, were cursing me and declaring that I had involved them in the greatest trouble.
Amongst these was the Count Borghi, who henceforth became once more my enemy.
The whole country was topsy-turvy; but all these intrigues, all these diabolical plots fell to the ground.
I wrote to the Bishop of Faenza, who could not get over his astonishment, but exhorted me to suspend judgment on the persons whose perfidious inconstancy I was denouncing, and assured me that the truth was too well established for anything henceforth to shake it.
His letter, which I carefully treasure, is dated July 20, 1826.
If that of this venerable prelate, illustrious by his learning and formerly Patriarch of Venice, was flattering and an honour, another, which I received from the Cape of Good Hope, was as vile and filthy.
It can easily be guessed it was the work of that other Chiappini to whom Lord Newborough had shown so much kindness.
The most malignant rage was manifest through the whole of it, beneath the hideous hues of expressions as indescribably ignoble as they were ridiculous.
To do full justice to it, it would doubtless be enough to let it be seen as it is; but I should fear to disgust my readers.