Let us recall for an instant the insatiable avidity of the Chiappinis, and the whole difficulty will vanish. Is it not easy to believe that, far from satisfied with the considerable sums they had received from my father, and the annual pension handed over to them by the Countess Borghi, they must have kept up an incessant demand for more? Tired of the worry, Pompeo and his mother must themselves have begged the Comte de Joinville to write them a letter which would thenceforth put a check on the intolerable pestering of the sbirro and his wife. The style, the oddness, the curtness of this missive, all proclaim it the result of an arrangement between the two noble families. As it might always be of use, it was carefully preserved; the other portions of the correspondence might have been compromising, and were perhaps destroyed on the very day they were received.
8th. “According to the Signora Galuppi, the Duke and Duchess of Chartres had but few of their people with them at Reggio;[72] how, then, did the priest Brunone see them pass through Alessandria with a numerous suite?”[73]
To dispose of this contradiction—in itself proof positive that there was no plot or bribery—there are two ways of fully reconciling the double evidence.
1st. The Signor Brunone, living in a town far from Court-doings, may well have thought considerable what to a person living since her birth in a royal residence seemed insignificant.
2nd. Who knows if the Duke, when he started, did not leave in the Alps the greater number of the suite, which he took on again afterwards, so as to destroy any sign of his having anything whatever to do with a man who had been seen almost by himself on the other side of the mountains?
9th. “If it is easy enough to attack the memory of Louis-Philippe-Joseph, who does not know with what just and profound veneration that of his wife is looked upon, and which must, nevertheless, be tarnished by an accusation of unworthy complicity?”
No one can be more anxious than I to give the homage of my respect to the memory of the Duchess; and my dearest wish would undoubtedly be to believe a life made illustrious by its many virtues, without a stain. Indeed, I had at first tried to persuade myself that, having been once before the victim of deception, she had again fallen into the snare woven for her at the time of her first confinement.[74]
A consoling illusion, which the stories of witnesses and many other indications did but too quickly banish from my mind![75]
It is a well-known fact that the finest characters are not without defects, and no one who knew her could deny that the Princess was in truth very ambitious.
Moreover, the fact of her being her parents’ only child and sole object of their deepest love, was an incentive for this loving daughter to turn her fondest hopes to the birth of an august scion who should be the glory of her maternity.[76]