To any one inclined to be deceived by the illusions of the prestige surrounding the accession of Charles X., it ought to have sufficed to cast a glance on the austere countenance of the Orphan of the Temple, to be recalled to the tragic reality of things. The King had for his niece and daughter-in-law an affection blended with compassion and respect. The pious and revered Princess gave to the court a character of gravity and sanctity.
VII
MADAME
The Duchess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry lived on the best of terms, showing toward each other a lively sympathy. Yet there was little analogy between their characters, and the two Princesses might even be said to form a complete contrast, one representing the grave side, the other the smiling side of the court.
Born November 7, 1798, and a widow since February 14, 1820, Madame (as the Duchess of Berry was called after the Duchess of Angouleme became Dauphiness) was but twenty-five when her father-in-law, Charles X., ascended the throne. She was certainly not pretty, but there was in her something seductive and captivating. The vivacity of her manner, her spontaneous conversation, her ardor, her animation, her youth, gave her charm. Educated at the court of her grandfather, Ferdinand, King of Naples, who carried bonhomie and familiarity to exaggeration, and lived in the company of peasants and lazzaroni, she had a horror of pretension and conceit. Her child-like physiognomy had a certain playful and rebellious expression; slightly indecorous speech did not displease her. This idol of the aristocracy was simple and jovial, mingling in her conversation Gallic salt and Neapolitan gaiety. In contrast with so many princesses who weary their companions and are wearied by them, she amused herself and others. Entering a family celebrated by its legendary catastrophes, she had lost nothing of the playfulness which was the essence of her nature. The Tuileries, the scene of such terrible dramas, did not inspire her as it did the Duchess of Angouleme, with sad reflections. When she heard Mass in the Chapel of the Chateau, she did not say to herself that here had resounded the furies of the Convention. The grand apartments, the court of the Carrousel, the garden, could not recall to her the terrible scenes of the 20th of June and the 10th of August. When she entered the Pavillon de Flore, she did not reflect that there had sat the Committee of Public Safety. The Tuileries were, to her eyes, only the abode of power and pleasure, an agreeable and beautiful dwelling that had brought her only happiness, since there she had given birth to the Child of Europe, the "Child of Miracle."
The Duchess of Berry thought that a palace should be neither a barracks nor a convent nor a prison, and that even for a princess there is no happiness without liberty. She loved to go out without an escort, to take walks, to visit the shops, to go to the little theatres, to make country parties. She was like a bird in a gilded cage, which often escapes and returns with pleasure only because it has escaped. She was neither worn out nor blasee; everything interested her, everything made her gay; she saw only the good side of things. In her all was young—mind, character, imagination, heart. Thus she knew none of those vague disquietudes, that causeless melancholy, that unreasoned sadness, from which suffer so many queens and so many princesses on the steps of a throne.
Gracious and simple in her manners, modest in her bearing, more inclined to laughter and smiles than to sobs and tears, satisfied with her lot despite her widowhood, she felt happy in being a princess, in being a mother, in being in France. Flattered by the homage addressed to her on all sides, but without haughty pride in it, she protected art and letters with out pedantry, rejuvenated the court, embellished the city, spread animation wherever she was seen, and appeared to the people like a seductive enchantress. Those who were at her receptions found themselves not in the presence of a coldly and solemnly majestic princess, but of an accomplished mistress of the house bent on making her salon agreeable to her guests. There was in her nothing to abash, and by her gracious aspect, her extreme affability, she knew how to put those with whom she talked at their ease, while wholly preserving her own rank. She was not only polite, she was engaging, always seeking to say something flattering or kindly to those who had the honor to approach her. If she visited a studio, she congratulated the artist; in a shop she made many purchases and talked with the merchants with a grace more charming to them, perhaps, than even her extreme liberality. If she went to a theatre, she enjoyed herself like a child. The select little fetes given by her always had a character of special originality and gaiety.
The Dauphiness had a higher rank at court than Madame, because she was married to the heir of the throne. But as she took much less interest in social matters, she did not shine with so much eclat. The Duchess of Berry was the queen of elegance. In all questions of adornment, toilet, furniture, she set the fashion. A commission as "tradesman of Madame" was the dream of all the merchants. Sometimes, on New Year's Day, her purchases at the chief shops were announced in the Moniteur. There were hardly any chroniques in the journals under the Restoration. A simple "item" sufficed for an account of the most dazzling fetes. If the customs of the newspapers had been under the reign of Charles X. what they are now, the Duchess of Berry would have filled all the "society notes," and the objective point of every "reporter," to use an American expression, would have been the Pavillon de Marsan, the "Little Chateau," as it was then called. There indeed shone in all their splendor the stars of French and foreign nobility, the women who possessed all sorts of aristocracy—of birth, of fortune, of wit, and of beauty. This little circle of luxury and elegance excited less jealousy and less criticism than did the intimate society of Marie Antoinette in the last part of the old regime, because in the Queen's time, to frequent the Petit Trianon was the road to honors, while under Charles X. the intimates of the Pavillon de Marsan did not make their social pleasures the stepping-stone to fortune.
The Duchess of Berry never meddled in politics. Doubtless her sympathies, like those of the Dauphiness, were with the Right, but she exercised no influence on the appointment of ministers and functionaries. Charles X. never consulted her about public affairs; the idea would never have occurred to the old King to ask counsel of so young and inexperienced a woman.