Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The last wishes of the unfortunate duke were not carried out. The packet was never forwarded to his wife. She may have received the letter, but the ring, the lock of hair, and some fifteen epistles, written in German, from the princess to the duke, and found upon him after his death, remained, without the duke’s letter, in the Archives of the Prefecture of Police. A fortnight after the duke’s execution, his widow addressed from Ettenheim, on the 16th of July, 1804, the following letter to the Countess d’Ecquevilly:—

“Since I still exist, dear Countess, it is certain that grief does not kill. Great God! for what frightful calamity was I reserved? In the most cruel torments, the most painful anxiety, never once did the horrible fear present itself to my mind that they might take his life. But, alas! it is only too true that the unhappy man has been made their victim: that this unjust sentence, this atrocious sentence, to which my whole being refused to lend credence, was pronounced and thereupon executed. I have not the courage to enter into details of this frightful event; but there is not one of them which is not heartrending, not one that would not paralyze with terror—I do not say every kind-hearted person, but anyone who has not lost all feeling of humanity. Alone, without support, without succour, without defence, oppressed with anxiety, worn out with fatigue, denied one moment of the repose demanded by Nature after his painful journey, he heard his death-sentence hurriedly pronounced, during which the unhappy man sank four{61} times into unconsciousness. What barbarity! Great God! And when the end came he was abandoned on all sides, without sympathy or consolation, without one affectionate hand to wipe away his tears or close his eyelids.

“Ah! I have not the cruel reproach to make to myself of not having done everything to follow him. Heaven knows that I would have risked my life with joy, I do not say to save him, but to soften the last moments of his life. Alas! they envied me this sad delight. Prayers, entreaties, were all in vain; I could not share his fate. They preferred to leave me to this wretched existence, condemned to eternal regret, eternal sorrow.”

Princess Charlotte died at Paris in 1841; and quite recently a note on the subject of her last wishes appeared in the Paris Intermédiaire, the French equivalent of our Notes and Queries. It was as follows:—“After the death of the Princess Charlotte, there was found among her papers a sealed packet, of which the superscription directed that it should be opened by the President of the Tribunal—at that time M. de Balli. This magistrate opened the packet and examined its contents. He found the whole correspondence of Bonaparte’s victim with ‘his friend,’ as the worthy magistrate put it: avec son amie. The president gave the packet to the family notary after re-closing it, saying that the letters were very touching, very interesting, but that they must be burnt; which was in fact done.”

The marriage of the Duke d’Enghien to the Princess de Rohan had been informal; the informality consisting solely in its having been celebrated without some necessary sanction: probably that of the king, Louis XVI. The ceremony was performed by Cardinal de Rohan, the bride’s uncle; and it is evident from her first letters that she was regarded by her nearest friends and relatives as the duke’s lawful wife.

Let us now, passing from political to private executions, say a few words about some of the famous duels of which Vincennes, or rather the wood of Vincennes, has from time to time been the scene.

Duels in France are generally fought with swords; and as it depends upon the combatants to strike or not to strike at a mortal part, a hostile meeting is by no means always attended with serious consequences. It is a mistake, however, to assume, as Englishmen frequently do, that a duel in France fought for grave reasons is not itself a grave affair. Plenty of sword duels have placed the worsted combatant in imminent danger of his life; though it is undeniable that the pistol, being a more hazardous weapon, proves, as a rule, deadlier than the sword. When M. Paolo Fiorentino, blackballed at the Society of Men of Letters, on the ground that he had accepted bribes, undertook to fight every member of the association, beginning with M. Amédée Achard, whose name, thanks to its two A’s, headed the alphabetical list, the Italian critic and bravo ran his first opponent through the body, and all but killed him. M. Henri de Pène received like treatment at the hands of an officer by reason of his having described the unseemly conduct of officers generally, as shown at a ball of which the École Militaire was the scene. Both Achard and Pène, however, recovered. Not so the unfortunate {62} Armand Carrel, one of the boldest and most brilliant writers that the Republican Press of France possessed. Armand Carrel and his antagonist, Émile de Girardin, another famous journalist of Louis Philippe’s reign, fought with pistols in that Bois de Vincennes whose name at once suggests crossed rapiers or whizzing bullets.

M. de Girardin was the inventor of the cheap press, not only in France, but in Europe. To reduce the price of the newspaper, and thus increase the number of subscribers, while covering any possible loss on the sale by the enlarged revenue from advertisements, which would flow in more and more rapidly as the circulation widened: such was Girardin’s plan. According, however, to his enemies, he proposed to “enlarge the portion hitherto allotted in newspapers to mendacious announcements to the self-commendations of quackery and imposture, at the sacrifice of space which should be devoted to philosophy, history, literature, the arts, and whatever else elevates or delights the mind of man.”

The proposed change was really one which Democrats and Republicans should have hailed with delight; for it promised to extend a knowledge of public affairs to readers who had hitherto been prevented from becoming acquainted with them by the high price of the newspapers, which, apart from their own articles on political affairs, published long accounts of the debates in the Chamber.