LOUIS XVII. IN PRISON.
The Count d'Artois, anxious to secure the open and cordial co-operation of the Duke of Orleans in behalf of the Royalist cause, sent him an earnest invitation to come to London, assuring him of an affectionate greeting on his own part and that of his friends. The duke repaired to London, and was received on the 13th of February with princely hospitality by the count and other members of the Bourbon family, at his residence in Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square.
Reconciliation.
"The king, Louis XVIII.," said the Count d'Artois, "will be delighted to see you; but it will be proper and necessary that you should first write to him." The Duke of Orleans did so. In this letter he must have recognized the sovereignty of Louis XVIII., a sovereignty founded on legitimacy, for he received a courteous and cordial reply. Thus there seemed to be a perfect reconciliation, social and political, between the elder and younger branches of the Bourbon family.
General Dumouriez had visited the court of the exiled monarch, pledged to him his homage, mounted the white cockade, and, receiving a commission in the Russian army, was marching with the Allies against republican France. All his energies were consecrated to the restoration of the house of Bourbon-Orleans.
Count d'Artois left no means untried to induce the Duke of Orleans and his brothers to enlist under the standard of emigration. But an instinctive reluctance to unite with foreigners in their war against France, and the entreaties of their anxious mother that they should not, in those dark and perilous hours, commit themselves to the apparently hopeless cause of the royal confederacy, led the cautious duke to adhere to the life of privacy upon which he had entered. But it is scarcely possible but that, under the circumstances, both he and his brothers must have longed for the restoration of the Bourbons, which would have enabled them to return to France and to enter upon the enjoyment of their exalted rank and their vast estates.
Embarrassments of the princes.
Still, the princes were subject to many humiliations and annoyances. The partisan press, on both sides, assailed them with every species of calumny. "The leading ministerial journals in London declared openly that they suspected the sincerity of the young Duke of Orleans in his late repentance; and that his past exemplary conduct should not be accepted as any security against his future treachery."
Aristocratic attentions.