Doña Emilia, as she is affectionately called by the Spanish people, passes her winters in Madrid, her salon being the rendezvous of the literary, political and diplomatic world. The author smacks not of the bas bleu; she is a simple woman in the truest sense of the word, and a regal grande dame as well.
Annabel Hord Seeger.
[A GREAT GRANDSON OF LOUIS XVI]
Over one hundred and thirteen years ago, in Paris, at ten in the morning of the twenty-first day of January, seventeen hundred and ninety-three, Louis Seize bowed his head beneath the guillotine's blade, as the Abbé Edgeworth called aloud, "Son of Saint Louis, ascend into heaven!" and as the surging multitude sent up the wild shout, "Vive la République!"
A few months ago, in Paris, at ten in the morning of the twenty-first day of January, nineteen hundred and six, two automobiles drew up before the parish church, Saint-Denis de la Chapelle, whose historic walls, fifteen centuries since, enclosed during life the intrepid and holy patroness of France, Geneviève de Nanterre; before whose shrine, five centuries since, the glorious virgin Savior of the realm, Jeanne d'Arc, passed an entire day in prayer; whose sacred aisles were ever the avenues for the royal feet in ancient times, on the termination of the coronation ceremony.
From these automobiles alights a party headed by a slender grave-looking young man of simple charming manners whose light grey eyes smile often. He is accompanied by a graceful young matron leading by the hand a handsome little fellow of some six years who wears a Louis Dix-Sept coiffure and long auburn curls on his shoulders.
An elderly lady of patrician countenance stands near me. I turn inquiring eyes into hers. With the grace and courtesy of a salon dame, she beckons me closer, whispering in my ear:
"His Majesty Jean III, Her Majesty Marie Madelaine and His Royal Highness the Dauphin, Henri-Charles-Louis."
My companion reverently and profoundly inclines her body, as the procession rushes past us. I do likewise, albeit with an unpleasant consciousness of an absence of the grace which envelops this member of the "Survivance" at my side.