“The king takes particular care of his clothes; and I once saw him in a very bad humour because he had torn his coat against a door. The papers in his private study, the books in his library, are arranged with great order, and he does not like to have their places changed in his absence. Whilst conversing, his majesty amuses himself by making envelopes for letters, and often makes those for the large despatches serve twice, by turning them. He has the habit of wasting nothing, not even a thing of small value, that can again be made available. He loves neither play nor field-sports: of an evening, in his domestic circle, he sometimes amuses himself with a game at billiards, but seldom for long together; for it is very rare that he can get more than an hour to himself, uninterrupted by the arrival of important despatches, by the visits of ministers or foreign ambassadors.”
We discern nothing very reprehensible in the harmless little peculiarities here enumerated. It may be stingy and unkingly to dislike being robbed, and in that case Louis Philippe is to blame, for we are told that he keeps a watchful eye over the expenses of his household. On the other hand, he is generous to prodigality in the repairs and embellishments of his palaces and domains; thus giving employment to many, and preparing for posterity monuments of his magnificence and of his princely encouragement of the artists and men of genius of his day. He has no abstract love of gold, no partiality for gloating over money-bags: his expenses, on the contrary, often exceed his income, and entail debts upon his civil list and private fortune. He has an open hand for his friends, a charitable heart for the poor. Party feeling should not blind us to private virtue. Even those who least admire the public conduct of Louis Philippe, who dislike his system of government, and blame his tortuous foreign policy, may, whilst censuring the conduct of the king, admit and admire the good qualities of the individual.
“I remember,” says M. Appert, when speaking of the subordinate officers of the royal household, “that one of these gentlemen, having amassed, a great deal too rapidly, a certain competency, asked the king’s permission to leave his service, and return to his own province, where an aunt, he said, had left him a pretty income. ‘I have not the least objection,’ replied his majesty; ‘I only hope that I have not been your uncle!’” And with this good-humoured remark, the heir, whether of dead aunt or living uncle, was allowed to retire upon his new-found fortune. Another anecdote, highly characteristic of him of whom it is told, may here be introduced. The burial-place of the house of Orleans is at Dreux. From an exaggerated feeling of regard or friendship, or whatever it may be called, the dowager-duchess, mother of the king, inserted in her will an earnest wish, indeed an injunction, that her intendant, M. de Folleville, should be buried in the outer vault, which precedes that of the Orleans family, and that a slab with his name and quality should close his grave. The king duly complied with his mother’s wish, but caused the inscribed side of the slab to be placed inwards, thus fulfilling the desire of the duchess without exposing her to the ill-natured comments of future generations.
M. Appert takes us even into the royal bed-chamber. He does so with all proper discretion, and we will venture to follow him thither.
“The king and queen always occupy the same bed, which is almost as broad as it is long, but whose two halves are very differently composed. On one side is a plain horse-hair mattress, on the other an excellent feather-bed. The latter is for the queen. The princes and princesses are accustomed, like the king, to sleep on a single mattress. There is always a light in their majesties’ apartment, and two pistols are placed upon a table near the king.”
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!” In this instance, however, the pistol practice is the result probably of an old habit rather than of any apprehension of a night attack upon the Tuileries. We have passed the days when kings were stabbed in their beds or poisoned in their cups; and the attempts of the Fieschis and Lecomtes do not appear to prey upon the robust health or dwell upon the imagination of their intended victim. With Marie Amélie it is very different. The anxieties and sorrows she has experienced since 1830 have been terrible; and doubtless she has wished many times that her husband had never exchanged his retirement at Neuilly, his circle of friends at the Palais Royal, for his present exalted but difficult and dangerous station. “Ah! M. Appert,” she more than once exclaimed, “he who invented the proverb, ‘Happy as a king,’ had certainly never worn a crown!” When we contemplate the careworn and suffering, but benevolent and interesting countenance of the virtuous Queen of the French, and call to mind all her trials during the last fifteen years, the constant attempts on the king’s life, the death of the Princess Mary and of the much-loved Duke of Orleans, and the perils incurred by her other sons in Africa, how can we doubt the sincerity of this exclamation? In unaffected piety, and in charity that blushes to be seen, this excellent princess finds consolation. M. Appert becomes enthusiastic when he speaks of her unassuming virtues, to which, however, his testimony was scarcely needed. None, we believe, not even her husband’s greatest enemies, have ever ventured to deny them.
“The queen disposes of five hundred thousand francs a-year for all her personal expenses; and certainly she gives more than four hundred thousand in charity of all kinds. ‘M. Appert,’ she would sometimes say to me, ‘give those five hundred francs, we spoke of, but put them down upon next month’s list, for the waters are low, my purse is empty.’” Imposture, ingratitude, even the insolent form of the petitions addressed to her, fail to discourage her in her benevolent mission. “Madam,” an old Bonapartist lady one day wrote to her, “if the Bourbons had not returned to France—for the misfortune of the nation—my beloved mistress and protectress, the Empress Maria Louisa, would still be upon the throne, and I should not be under the humiliating necessity of telling you that I am without bread, and that the wretched mattress upon which I sleep is about to be thrown out of the garret I inhabit, because my year’s rent is unpaid! I dare not ask you for assistance, for my heart is with my real sovereign, and I cannot promise you my gratitude. If, however, you think proper to preserve a life which, since the misfortunes of my country, has been so full of bitterness, I will accept a loan: I should blush to receive a gift. I am, madam, your servant, Ch——r.”
Here was a pretty letter to set before a queen; a mode of imploring alms that might well have disgusted the most charitable. But what was Maria Amélie’s reply to the precious epistle. She was accustomed to open all the petitions addressed to her—and numerous indeed they were—with her own hand, and to write upon many of them instructions for M. Appert. When the impertinent missive of the Bonapartist reached that gentleman, the following lines had been added to it:—“She must be very unhappy for she is very unjust. A hundred francs to be sent to her immediately; and I beg M. Appert to make inquiries concerning this lady’s circumstances.” M. Appert, indignant at the tone of the letter, ventured to remonstrate; but the queen insisted, and even tripled her intended donation, in case it should be required by her singular petitioner, whom her almoner accordingly proceeded to visit. “I knocked at a worm-eaten door, on the fifth floor of a house in the Rue St. André des Arts, and a lady dressed in black (it was her only gown,) opened it.
“‘Sir,’ said she, much agitated, ‘are you the commissary of police come to arrest me for my shameful letter to the queen? You must forgive me: I am so unhappy that at times I become deranged. I am sorry to have written as I did to a princess whom all the poor call good and charitable.’
“‘Be not alarmed, madam,’ I replied, taking her petition from my pocket. ‘Read her majesty’s orders; they will enable you to judge of her better than any thing I could tell you.’