5th. “Supposing the Duke and Duchess of Chartres to have been the perpetrators of this abominable traffic, would the Duchess have returned to Italy three years later? Would she have reappeared under the same name of Comtesse Joinville and with such a display of luxury and magnificence?”
Although at the time the Prince and Princess must have suffered from grave fears, they had, nevertheless, ground for hoping that influence and money would, if necessary, be able to stifle the accusing voices of a few poor and timid witnesses.
But could they be certain of equally good luck in the future?
Therefore it was necessary to think of and provide for everything. Well, what more efficacious and advantageous way of doing this was there than to put people on a wrong scent by confusing the dates? And supposing that some unlucky echoes of the old rumours at Brisighella and Ravenna[64] were still to be heard, what more likely to destroy them than boldness and bravado? What more plausible, deluding and beguiling than a visit in state after so short a lapse of time, a procedure which our opposers think so improbable?
In this matter we feel that the objection absolutely contradicts itself. Let us examine it in detail.
Nature does not easily give up its rights; it makes itself heard even in the hardest hearts, and the heart of a mother cannot possibly remain deaf to its mighty voice.
Therefore the Duchess’s whole mind is drawn and attracted to the spot that holds the first-fruit of her maternity, and there is born in her the ardent desire to turn her steps thither.
Despite convenances, despite obstacles, despite a thousand objections, this desire must needs find fulfilment, with these two remarkable circumstances: i.e.[65] the first, that the Duke seems to have consented to his wife’s request, only on the condition that she would bind herself in a very special fashion to keeping the secret inviolable by becoming a Freemason;[66] the second, that the arrival of the Princess at Florence exactly coincides with the time when great influence must have been used with regard to Chiappini, who was not only suddenly called to fill a more honourable and lucrative post, but was admitted to some sort of intimacy with his sovereign, who was good enough also to take a quite wonderful interest in me.[67]