A few days after our departure we were in the open sea, absorbed in professional duties and daily drills, when afar off we saw the smoke of a steamer. Soon the vessel came in sight and hoisted signals for our admiral, who ordered the fleet to bring to. The sea being calm, an officer from the steamer boarded the Ocean, and immediately afterwards we saw the admiral's barge lowered, and he got into it and steered for the Belle-Poule. Amid the general astonishment and numerous conjectures caused by this unusual incident, I received my chief at the companion-ladder. He grasped my hand, squeezed it tight, drew me into the cabin, and said, "Your brother, the Duc d'Orleans, is dead, killed in a carriage accident. My orders are to send you to Paris at once." The rough old sailor's face betrayed his deep emotion. But how shall I describe my own, under such a terrible and unexpected blow? This world's sorest sorrows are those that tear the human heart-strings, and mine was even more bitter than an ordinary grief, for I do not believe there ever was a more attached family than ours, and not only had I lost the most beloved of brothers, but the confidant, the guide and the companion of my whole life. I seemed to see and feel the despair of my father, above all of my mother, and of my brothers and sisters, too, under this awful blow, and their sorrow added to my own. For a moment I stood thunderstruck. Then the admiral left me alone …. I gave over my ship to my second in command, and within an hour I was on my way to Toulon, the gloomy faces round me betraying the general feeling that this was a public misfortune, and that the loss to France was very great.
It was indeed immense, irreparable. For the past ten years we all, and with us the whole of France, had looked to my brother as our leader, the "chef de demain," our chief in the great days that were to come. We had of course the tenderest affection, the most entire devotion, the deepest respect for the King, Le Pere, as we always called him amongst ourselves, but it was to Chartres we turned for guidance always. There was not one of us who would not from childhood upwards have unhesitatingly accepted his advice and his authority. How often had we discussed with him all the chances the future might bring! How often, too, had he pointed out the various parts he destined each of us to play, every one of them, we felt, stamped with the good sense and profound understanding of a born leader of men! And what we, his brothers, his lieutenants, so to speak, felt about him, the country felt as well. The King was in the breach, valiantly carrying on the battle of life, to preserve the peace, calm, and prosperity she was enjoying to France, and all those who were not blinded by democratic envy were grateful to him for so doing. But he was growing old, great complications might arise, and, like us, all had looked confidently to the young leader who, without ever mixing himself up in the barren struggles of everyday politics, was ceaselessly preparing himself for great and important contingencies. For every one else, as well as for us, I repeat, the Duc d'Orleans was the chef de demain. His incessant care for the good organisation and perfecting of our military forces, and the pains he took to select the most deserving men from their ranks without a shadow of favouritism or regard for birth—such men as Lamoriciere, Cavaignac, Canrobert, and MacMahon—and to advance them to the highest positions, had been appreciated by the public. All this was pour demain, for the morrow. So too in matters civilian. If he did stretch out his hand, not indeed to incorrigible revolutionaries, but to men of advanced opinions, who were in opposition to the King's Government, that too was "for the morrow." It was so as to be able, in the hour of his country's peril, to serve as the patriotic link between all the living forces in the nation. The general feeling, alas! both our own and that of the great majority of thinking men, was that the bond that might have held these forces together against revolution, overflowing from within, as well as enemies attacking from without, had just been snapped. Death had destroyed the anticipated and universally accepted successor, and with him the chief prop of the July Monarchy. Thenceforward the ship was to toss uncommanded, objectless and compassless, at the mercy of every tempest. Men and principles alike had failed us, and we were to relapse once more into a state of unstable government. This sad presentiment was only too well justified by ultimate events.
Physically, my eldest brother was tall, with a slight and exceptionally elegant figure. In uniform and on horseback he looked magnificent, and his soldierly presence pleased the troops as much as it did the populace. As for bravery, he was downright reckless, another cause for popularity with the masses. Everybody knew he had received a wound in Africa, before Mascara, by throwing himself boldly among the skirmishers at a critical moment. It was known, too, that at the Mouzaia Pass, when the whole army was wearing a cap covered with black oilcloth, he alone insisted on wearing a bright red one, which marked him out to all the men as their commanding officer, but which also exposed himself, and those near him as well, to the enemy's bullets. To the charm of valour my brother added that of speech, that music of the tongue to which all men, but especially Frenchmen, are so sensitive. And to this he added another quality not less seductive, especially in a prince—he was a good listener; listening, in fact, was one of his foremost qualities. Surrounded, as he always was, by eminent men of every nationality, he would assimilate with extraordinary facility and wonderful retentiveness not only the fruitful ideas which he gleaned from their conversation, but the very words which struck his fancy. And these words, as well as those with which his cultivated and thoroughly French mind and his heart inspired him, he knew how to use with marvellous effect. What more eloquent than the toast he proposed at a farewell banquet in the open air, at which his whole division, officers and men alike, were gathered round him, after their return from the expedition to the Iron Gates?
"In the name of the King, who four times over has sent his son to serve in its ranks, I drink to the army of Africa and its general-in-chief, Marshal Vallee, under whose orders it has accomplished such great deeds.
"To the army which has conquered a vast and splendid empire for France, opening a boundless field to that civilisation of which it is the vanguard, and that colonisation of which it is the first pledge.
"To the army that has handled rifle and pick in turn, fighting Arabs or fever as they came, facing an inglorious death in hospital with stoic resignation, and which by its brilliant valour has preserved the most famous traditions of our arms among our youthful soldiers.
"To the army, the flower of that greater French army—the nursery, on the one battlefield reserved to us alone, of our future military chiefs—whose heart swells with a just and noble pride in those who have already risen from its ranks.
"To the army, which, distant as it is from the fatherland, knows happily nothing of the intestine conflicts waged there, except to curse them, and which, being as it is the refuge of those who flee them, asks nothing but to fight nature, Arabs, and the climate, in the general interest of France.
"And to the illustrious leader, the captor of Constantine, who has stamped French Africa with the indelible seal of permanent possession, and planted our flag where the Romans dared not carry their eagles."
The reception given by the soldiers, whose toils and dangers he had just been sharing, to this vigorous language may be imagined. He had the supreme charm, both for soldiers and for artists, who always found a friend and protector in him, and for women as well. But here I touch a delicate subject, and the most inviolable secrecy checks my pen. Old Baron James de Rothschild was heard to say in his old age that he yet had to meet the lady who could resist him. I fancy he boasted somewhat. I fancy, too, that if he had not met her then, he ended by knowing such a lady. But I am certain, without going so far as the baron did, that my brother met few women, in the course of his radiant youth, who did not respond to his homage, at all events with a secret but tender emotion. Into what adventures that personal charm of his carried him! He was saved on one such occasion, from a very risky situation, by his own sangfroid and boldness. It was at a period when attempted risings were continually occurring in Paris. Either HE or SHE had had the somewhat original idea of meeting at a house in a far from poetic street which still exists—the Rue Tiquetonne. Presently alarming sounds were heard, and then died away, only to begin again, louder than ever. Soon the distant rolling of drums sounded, followed by rifle shots. It was the situation in the fourth act of The Huguenots. They rushed to the window. The street was full of armed rioters, busily engaged in building up barricades. How was he, the Prince Royal, known as he was by everybody, to get away? "I turned up the collar of my overcoat," he told me, "and I was lucky enough to get into the street just as they were dragging up a carriage to upset it and make it the nucleus of the barricade. I caught hold of it at once, helped to turn it over, and to pile paving-stones and stuff of all sorts over and round it, with an amount of zeal that disarmed all suspicion. And then I watched my opportunity and slipped away." In an hour he was in uniform and on horseback, and the Municipal Guard was carrying HIS barricade at the bayonet's point. [Footnote: Translator's note.—What became of the poor lady?]