"Gentlemen, you have made war upon me à la St. Laurent. I have nothing to reproach myself with. I have only discharged the duty of a mother to gain the inheritance of her son."[AM]
Imprisonment at Blaye.
The captive was treated with the respect due to her rank. After a brief confinement at Nantes, she was transferred to the citadel of Blaye, one of the most gloomy of prisons, on the left bank of the Gironde. All the effects of this princess of royal birth, who had entered France as regent, were tied up in a pocket-handkerchief. Measures were apparently adopted to keep her in close captivity, without trial, for a long time. The fortress was thoroughly manned with nine hundred men, and put in a state of defense, as if anticipating a siege. Three gun-boats were stationed in the river. The small building within the walls of the citadel, which was assigned to the duchess, was surrounded with a double row of palisades ten or twelve feet high. The windows were covered with strong iron bars, and even the apertures of the chimneys were closed with an iron grating. Even the gay spirit of the princess was subdued by the glooms in which she was enveloped.
Still, from many eminent men of her own party she received gratifying proofs of fidelity. Chateaubriand issued an eloquent pamphlet which won the applause of the Legitimists throughout Europe. In this he had the boldness to exclaim, "Madame, your son is my king." In a letter of condolence to the princess, in which he offered his professional services in her defense, he said:
"Madame,—You will deem it inconsiderate, obtrusive, that at such a moment as this I entreat you to grant me a favor, but it is the high ambition of my life. I would earnestly solicit to be numbered among your defenders. I have no personal title to the great favor I solicit of your new grandeur, but I venture to implore it in memory of a prince of whom you deigned to name me historian, and in the name of my family's blood. It was my brother's glorious destiny to die with his illustrious grandfather, M. de Malesherbes, the defender of Louis XVI., the same day, the same hour, for the same cause, and upon the same scaffold. Chateaubriand."
The terrible secret.
But a terrible secret was soon whispered abroad, which overwhelmed the princess with shame, and which filled the court of Louis Philippe with joy, as it silenced all voices which would speak in her favor. It became evident that the duchess was again to become a mother. For a princess, the child, sister, and mother of a king, secretly to marry some unknown man, was deemed as great a degradation as such a person could be guilty of. The shame was as great as it would be in New York for the daughter of a millionaire secretly to marry a negro coachman. It consigned the princess to irremediable disgrace. But the situation in which she found herself compelled her to acknowledge her marriage. The universal assumption was that she had not been married. Secrecy divests marriage of its sanctity.
The sufferings through which the princess passed were awful. No pen can describe them. Could she but be released from prison, her shame might be concealed. Her tears and entreaties were all unavailing. Louis Philippe, unmindful that the princess was the niece of his wife, deemed that the interests of his dynasty required that she should be held with a firm grasp until the birth of her child should consign her to ignominy from which there could be no redemption.
On the 22d of February, 1833, the duchess placed in the hands of General Bugeaud, governor of the citadel of Blaye, the following declaration: