M. de Mesnard adds this reflection: "What the King regarded as folly was only the appearance of it. There was in Madame a rich fund of reason, justice, and humanity. Independently of all the acts of beneficence daily done here, Madame employs still more considerable sums in the support of young girls in the convents of Lucon and Mantes, and in several other establishments. There are in the colleges a large number of young people of families of modest fortune, whose expenses she pays. The Hospital of Rosny alone costs Madame from twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand francs a year. The exhaustless bounty of this august Princess extends to all. There is no sort of aid that Her Royal Highness does not take pleasure in according: subscriptions without interest for her, for concerts that she will not hear, for benefit performances that she will not see, everything gets a subscription from her, and it all costs more than is convenient with the Princess's revenue. Sometimes it happens that her funds are exhausted, and as her benevolence never is, embarrassment follows."
Apropos of this the Count de Mesnard relates a touching anecdote. One winter exceedingly cold, the Duchess of Berry was about to give a fete in the Pavillon de Marsan. During the day she had supervised the preparations. Things were arranged perfectly, when all at once her face saddened. She was asked respectfully what had displeased her. "What icy weather!" she cried. "Poor people may be dying of cold and hunger to-night while we are taking our delights. That spoils my pleasure." Then she added emphatically: "Go call the Marquis de Sassenay" (her Treasurer).
The Marquis came promptly.
"Monsieur," said the good Princess, "you must write instantly to the twelve mayors of Paris, and in each letter put one thousand francs to be expended in wood, and distributed this very night to the poor families of each arrondissement. It is very little, but it may save some unfortunates."
The Treasurer responded: "Madame, I should be eager to obey the orders of Her Royal Highness, but she has nothing, or almost nothing, in her treasury."
A feeling of discontent was strongly depicted on the face of Madame, who was about to give expression to it, when M. de Mesnard hastened to say that the funds of the First Equerry were in better state than those of the Treasurer, and remitted to the latter the twelve thousand francs, which were distributed to the poor that evening according to the Princess's wishes.
The Duchess of Berry had the double gift of pleasing and making herself loved. All the persons of her household, all her servitors, from the great nobles and great ladies to the domestics and the chamber-maids, were deeply devoted to her. Poor or rich, she had attentions for all. Listen to the Count de Mesnard:—
"Madame is incessantly making presents to all who approach her. At New Year's her apartments are a veritable bazaar furnished from all the shops of Paris; her provision, made from every quarter, is universal, from bon-bons to the most precious articles—everything is there. Madame has thought of each specially; the people of her own service are not forgotten any more than the ladies and officers of her household; father, mother, children, every one, is included in the distribution. The royal family naturally comes first; next, the numerous relatives of the Palais Royal, of whom she is very fond; then her family at Naples, which is also numerous; and finally all of us, masters and servants, we all have our turn."
No one, we think, has made a more exact portrait of the Duchess of Berry than the Count Armand de Pontmartin, who is so familiar with the Restoration. In his truthful and lively Souvenirs d'un vieux critique, how well he presents "this flower of Ischia or of Castellamare, transplanted to the banks of the Seine, under the gray sky of Paris, to this Chateau des Tuileries, which the revolutions peopled with phantoms before making it a spectre."
How really she was "this good Duchess, so French and so Neapolitan at once, half Vesuvius, half school-girl, whom nothing must prevent us from honoring and loving." The chivalric and sentimental rhetoric of the time, the elegies of the poets, the noble prose of Chateaubriand, the tearful articles of the royalist journals, have condemned her to appear forever solemn and sublime. It was sought to confine her youth between a tomb and a cradle. But as M. de Pontmartin so finely remarks: "At the end of two or three years her true nature appears beneath this artificial drapery. Amusements recommence, distractions abound. The Princess is no longer a heroine; she is a sprite. The beach of Dieppe sings her praises better, a thousand times better, than the chorus of courtiers. She loves pleasure, but she wishes every pleasure to be a grace or a benefit. She creates a mine of gold under the sand of the Norman coast; she pacifies political rancor and soothes the wounds of the grumblers of the Grand Army. She makes popular the name of Bourbon, which had suffered from so much ingratitude. The Petit-Chateau, as her delightful household was called, renews the elegant manners, the exquisite gallantries of the court of Anne of Austria, and offers to the romancers the models of which Balzac, later, made so much too free use. There I see our amiable Duchess in her true element, not on the kind of Sinai on which the writers of the white flag have perched her, prodigal in their imitations of Bossuet,—between Jeanne d'Arc and Jeanne Hachette, between Valentine de Milan and the Widow of Malabar."