The Prince of that name was Louis-Philippe, who married first Louise-Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, and, secondly, Madame de Montesson; but this last union was always kept secret.
Of the first marriage was born Louis-Philippe-Joseph, then commonly called Duc de Chartres, who, in his turn, became Duke of Orleans, a title he gave up later to assume the ludicrous nickname of Egalité, under which he made himself so ignominiously notorious. He had married Mademoiselle Louise Marie Adélaïde, daughter of the Duc de Bourbon Penthièvre, who died in 1821, under the name of the Dowager Duchess of Orleans.
Louis-Philippe-Joseph is precisely the person who, according to a host of admitted facts, seems to us to have been the guilty perpetrator of the criminal exchange; I say seems, for submitting beforehand to the final decision of my judges, I will do nothing to prejudice it.
I will not say, with the historians of his life,[20] that the Duc de Chartres, when scarcely out of his boyhood, showed the most depraved tastes, and took no pleasure but in wickedness.
I will not say that from his youth upwards his degrading vices made him the object of universal contempt, and ended by earning for him the vilest names.
I will not repeat that in his inextinguishable passion for riches he was not afraid to show the greatest impatience at the prolongation of his father’s life; that, not satisfied with degrading himself, he was willing publicly to dishonour her who had borne him in her bosom, and shamelessly forswore his glorious descent from the most august blood.
I will not repeat that his wife had the constant affliction of finding her efforts to lead him into the ways of a wise moderation quite useless, and that she had to endure hardships of all sorts from a husband both hard and unfaithful.
I will not repeat that he pitilessly sent the sad fruits of his profligacy to the asylum for the poor, and that his legitimate children, given over very early into the hands of strangers, were never the objects of his care, seldom of his endearments.
THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS