This word has a very different signification in Italian, from that which we have given it, in English. It means a garden in the country; the house not being necessarily any part of it, although there is usually a casino or pavilion.
This ancient family still exists, though much shorn of its splendour, by the alienation of its estates, in consequence of the marriage of Charlotte de Montmorency, heiress of the eldest line, with a Prince of Condé, two centuries since. By this union, the estates and chateaux of Chantilly, Ecouen, etc., ancient possessions of the house, passed into a junior branch of the royal family. In this manner Enghien, a seigneurie of the Montmorencies, came to be the title of a prince of the blood, in the person of the unfortunate descendant of Charlotte of that name. At the present time, besides the Duc de Montmorency, the Duc de Laval-Montmorency, the Duc de Luxembourg, the Prince de Bauffremont, the Prince de Tancarville, and one or two more, are members of this family, and most of them are, or were before the late revolution, peers of France. The writer knew, at Paris, a Colonel de Montmorency, an Irishman by birth, who claimed to be the head of this celebrated family, as a descendant of a cadet who followed the Conqueror into England. There are two Irish peers, who have also pretensions of the same sort, though the French branches of the family look coolly on the claim. The title of "First Christian Baron," is not derived from antiquity, ancient as the house unquestionably is, but from the circumstance that the barony of Montmorency, from its local position, in sight of Paris, aided by the great power of the family, rendered the barons the first in importance to their sovereign. The family of Talleyrand-Perigord is so ancient, that, in the middle ages, when a King demanded of its head, "Who made you Count de Perigord?" he was asked, by way of reply, "Who made you King of France?"—God! I think I should have hesitated on the score of taste about establishing myself in a house of the Montmorencies, but Jonathan has usually no such scruples. Our own residence was but temporary, the hotel being public.
In New York, the writer has a house with two drawing-rooms, a dining-room, eight bed-rooms, dressing-rooms, four good servants' rooms, with excellent cellars, cisterns, wells, baths, water-closets, etc. for the same money that he had an apartment in Paris, of one drawing-room, a cabinet, four small and inferior bed-rooms, dining-room, and ante-chamber; the kitchens, offices, cellars, etc. being altogether in favour of the New York residence. In Paris, water was bought in addition, and a tax of forty dollars a year was paid for inhabiting an apartment or a certain amount of rent; a tax that was quite independent of the taxes on the house, doors, and windows, which in both cases were paid by the landlord.
This affair of the jewels of the Princess of Orange is one proof, among many others, of the influence of the vilest portion of mankind over their fellow-creatures. It suited the convenience and views of some miscreant who pandered for the press (and the world is full of them), to throw out a hint that the Prince of Orange had been guilty of purloining the jewels to pay his gambling debts, and the ignorant, the credulous, and the wonder-mongers, believed a charge of this nature, against a frank and generous soldier! It was a charge, that, in the nature of things, could only be disproved by detecting the robber, and one that a prince and a gentleman would scarcely stoop to deny. Accident favoured the truth. The jewels have, oddly enough, been discovered in New York, and the robber punished. Now, the wretch who first started this groundless calumny against the Prince of Orange, belongs exactly to that school whose members impart to America more than half her notions of the distinguished men of Europe.