"'When they were at Venice, the Chambords lived in one palace, a very fine one, and the Duchesse de Berri in another farther down the canal, and the Duchess of Parma in a third. I did not see the Duchesse de Berri, though I should have liked to have done so. She was married then to a Marchese Lucchesi, by whom she had a quantity of grown-up sons and daughters. They were dreadfully extravagant—not Lucchesi, he never was, but she was, and her sons-in-law. The Comte de Chambord paid her debts over and over again, but at last her things were obliged to be sold.
"'When we went to dine with the Chambords, we were warned that we must not allow anything to pass, or we should not get any dinner. We went at half-past four, and the soup came, and the Duke (de Bordeaux) was talking to me at that time, and, while I was listening, the soup was carried away, and so it was with nearly everything else. The party was almost entirely composed of French exiles. Lou wrote down their names at the time, but I have forgotten them now. At seven our gondola was ordered, and it came too late, the royalties were so punctual. The Duke and Duchess got up, and saying, "I wish you a pleasant evening," went out, and then we had nothing for it but to go away. An old Venetian gentleman helped us out of the scrape, and gave us a lift home in his gondola, and very much aghast our gondoliers were when they met us in another boat upon the canal, while they were rowing with all their might to fetch us away. The royal family used to go in the evening to an island, which the Duke had bought for them to have exercise upon.
"'They would never do for France: they have not the manners. She is ugly,[276] and then she dresses so badly—no, she would never do. The only one who would do out of both sets is Aumale: he is really a fine prince. The Comte de Paris would of course naturally come first, but the Duke of Orleans used to say, 'I will never be a king by anything but popular election,' and that is against his family succeeding. All the members of the family look up to Aumale.
"'Did you ever hear about the old Duc de Coigny and his arm? His arm was shot during the Moscow campaign, and when it was amputated, numbers of others having their limbs taken off at the same time, he exclaimed, "Oh mon cher bras, qui m'a si bien servi, je ne puis jamais me séparer de ce cher bras," and he insisted on its being found for him, which was highly inconvenient, and packed it up in a portmanteau, which he carried before him on horseback during the whole of the return. The soldiers quite hated that arm; however, the Duke insisted upon it. At last, as he was crossing a ford in a carriage, the portmanteau rolled off his knee on to his foot and hurt it exceedingly, upon which he was so exasperated that in a fit of rage he opened the carriage door and kicked it out into the river. When he got to his night quarters, however, the Duke was in absolute despair—"Oh mon pauvre bras! mon pauvre cher bras!" He had wished it to be buried with him; for was it not his most faithful servant? he said. However, none of the soldiers were inclined to go and fish it up for him, and since then, poor man, he has had to be buried without it.
"'The wife of this Duc de Coigny was Henrietta Dalrymple Hamilton, who brought him large estates. Her parents were miserable at her marrying a foreigner, from the idea that the estates would certainly then go out of the family; but of all his children only two daughters survive; one is Lady Manvers, and the other married Lord Stair, and thus brought back the estates to the elder branch of the Dalrymples. The Duc died last year, chiefly of grief for the death of another daughter who had married a Frenchman. His sister married Maréchal Sebastiani and had five daughters. One of these was the murdered Duchesse de Praslin.
"'Madame de Praslin was one of a society that there was in Paris then, who used to laugh at anything like spiritualism or warnings from another world. Madame de Rabuteau was her great friend and partisan in these opinions. One day Madame de Praslin went with her husband to Choiseul Praslin. Her room was magnificent, and she slept in a great velvet bed. In the middle of the night, she awoke with a sense of something moving in the room, and, lifting herself up in bed, saw, by the expiring embers of the fire, a figure, and as it turned, she saw, as it were, something green. She scarcely knew whether she was asleep or awake, and, to convince herself, stretched out her hand and encountered something cold, hard, and which felt like steel. Then, widely awake, she saw the figure recede and vanish out of the room. She felt a thrill of horror and began to reason with herself. "Well," she said, "I have always opposed and laughed at belief in these things, and now one of them has come to me. Now what can it mean? It can only mean that I am soon to die, and it has come as a warning."
"'Soon after Madame de Praslin returned to Paris, and at the house of Madame de Rabuteau she met all her former intimates. "Oh," said Madame de Rabuteau as she entered the room, "I am so glad you have come to help me to laugh at all these people, who are holding forth upon revelations from another world."—"Indeed, I think we had better talk of something else," said Madame de Praslin; "let us talk of something else."—"Why, my dear, you used to be such an ardent defender of mine," said Madame de Rabuteau, "are you going over to the other side?" But Madame de Praslin resolutely refused the subject and "parlons d'autre chose" was all that could be extracted from her. When the rest of the company was gone, Madame de Rabuteau said, "Well, now, what is it? what can have come over you this evening? why do you not laugh at their manifestations?"—"Simply because I have had one myself," replied very gravely Madame de Praslin, and she told what had happened, saying that she believed it to indicate her approaching death. Madame de Rabuteau tried to argue her out of the impression, but in vain. Madame de Praslin went home, and a few days after she was murdered in the Hôtel Sebastiani.
"'When the Duke was taken, search was made, and amongst his things were found a green mask and a dagger. He had evidently intended to murder the Duchess at Choiseul Praslin, and it had been no spirit that she saw.
"'Madame de Feuchères was originally a Miss Sophia Dawes, the daughter of Mr. Dawes, who was a shipbuilder at Ryde and a very respectable man. The Duc de Bourbon[277] saw her somewhere and took a great fancy to her, and, to facilitate an intimacy with her, he married her to his aide-de-camp, the Baron de Feuchères. But M. de Feuchères was a very honourable man. When the marriage was proposed to him, the Duke paying the dowry, he took her for a daughter of the Duke, and when he found out the real state of things, he separated from her at once, leaving all her fortune in her hands. It was supposed that Madame de Feuchères was in the Orleans interest, and that therefore the Duke would leave everything to the Duc d'Aumale. I must say for the Duchesse de Berri that she was exceedingly good-natured about that. When there was a question about the Feuchères being received at the palace, she advocated it, for the sake of ma tante,[278] and Madame de Feuchères came. But when the Revolution took place and Charles X. fled, the feelings of the Duc de Bourbon were changed; all his loyalty was roused, and he said that he must follow son roi. Nothing that Madame de Feuchères could say could change this resolution. They said that he hanged himself (August 27, 1830), immediately after hearing of the escape, but few believed it; most thought that Madame de Feuchères had done it—unjustly perhaps, because, on arriving at an inn where they were to sleep, the Duke observed that the landlord looked very dispirited, and knowing the cause, said, "I am afraid you have had some sad trouble in your family besides all these terrible public events."—"Yes, Monseigneur," said the man, "my brother hanged himself yesterday morning."—"And how did he do that?" said the Duke. "Oh, Monseigneur, he hanged himself from the bolt of the shutter."—"No, that is impossible," said the Duke, "for the man was too tall." Then the landlord exactly described the process by which his brother had effected his purpose, raising himself upon his knees, &c., and it was precisely in that way that the body of the Duke was found in the château of St. Leu. Still most people thought that Madame de Feuchères had murdered him in his bed, and then hung up his body to avoid suspicion.[279]
"'It was said that the Duke could not have hanged himself, because he had hurt his hand and could not use it, and so could not have tied himself up, but Lord Stuart always said that he was very thankful that his evidence was not called for, because he had met the Duke at a dinner-party a little while before, when he showed that he could use his hand by carving a large turkey beautifully. That dinner-party was at St. Leu. Madame Adelaide had wanted to buy St. Leu, but the Duke said, "No; yet never mind; some day it will come into your family all the same." The Duke sat by Madame Adelaide at dinner and carved the turkey. "Pray do not attempt it, Monseigneur," she said, "for it will be too much for you," but he was able to do it very well.