They then removed to Hartwell Hall, a fine Elizabethan house between Oxford and Aylesbury, which they occupied until the year 1814.
Some memories of the Duchess of Angoulême at Hartwell have been preserved. She is described as reserved and sad, and averse to the notice or attention of strangers. But she would often be seen standing in the porch of the little church a silent spectator of the Protestant service, and she expressed to the minister her pleasure at the reverence and fitness which characterised the English mode of worship.
When the events of 1814 drove Napoleon into exile, and brought back Louis XVIII. to the throne, the Duchess of Angoulême was at Hartwell with her uncle. It was on the 25th of March that the news reached them of the proclamation of Louis XVIII. at Bordeaux. A month later they set out on their return to France. The Prince Regent accompanied them to Dover, the Duke of Clarence escorted them across the Channel. From Calais to Paris their progress was one long triumphal procession.
The state entry of the King into Paris took place on the 3rd of May. Seated in an open carriage drawn by eight white horses, Louis XVIII. had on his left hand the “daughter of the last King.” It was on her that all eyes were turned, and to her that the warmest tribute of welcome was paid. Dressed wholly in white, there was on her countenance a kind of grave joy which struck all beholders. What strangely mingled thoughts were passing through her mind may well be imagined. Tears which she could not restrain fell frequently from her eyes. When she reached the Tuileries, which she had not seen since the fatal day when her parents had left it to take refuge in the Assembly twenty-two years before, the thronging memories of the past were too much for nature to bear, and she was carried into the palace in a swoon.
There had reached Madame Royale, year by year during her exile, a bunch of flowers gathered from her mother’s grave. A faithful old Royalist, M. Descloseaux, had bought the ground in which the King and Queen, amongst many other victims of the Reign of Terror, had been interred, and to keep it sacred had converted it into an orchard and planted it with flowers. To this sacred spot the Duchess of Angoulême bent her steps the day after her entry into Paris, and there, as she thanked M. Descloseaux in a voice broken by emotion, the loyal old man made over to her the ground he had been preserving for her for the past seventeen years.
Public rejoicings followed the restoration in abundance. At the opera “Edipus at Colonos” was presented, and at the passage where Edipus recounts the tender care of Antigone, Louis XVIII. turned to the Duchess of Angoulême and kissed her hand.
Crowds came to the Tuileries to be presented to the duchess. She received twelve at a time, and the ladies so presented all wore white, with coronets of fleur-de-lys. The likeness which the duchess bore to her mother was much remarked; but it has been called “the resemblance of cold marble to animated flesh and blood,” and young débutantes were apt to look upon the reserve and self-repression of the princess as austerity or want of sympathy. The terrible past was too deeply impressed on her mind for her to shake it off. The blessing of children, whose care and training might have brought her new hopes and new associations, had been denied her, and her thoughts went back constantly to the days of her youth and to the loved ones who had been so cruelly torn from her.
Within the year of the Restoration the Duchess of Angoulême found new work to her hand. Ten months after Louis XVIII.’s entry into Paris came the tidings that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and once more landed on French soil. The hearts of the French people, never aroused to enthusiasm for Louis XVIII., turned instinctively to the Emperor. The Duchess of Angoulême was at Bordeaux when the news reached her. The men of the city were loyal to the monarchy, but the soldiers of the line awaited the course of events in silence. It was to win these that the duchess bent all her energy. Mounted on horseback, she reviewed the troops day after day, and sought earnestly to make them declare for the King. She met with little or no support, and when, on the 1st of April, the Imperial forces, under General Clauzel, arrived before the city, it was evident that all their sympathies were with the Emperor. Perceiving this, the duchess addressed herself to the National Guard and the citizen volunteers. These, regardless of personal danger, she reviewed in face of the enemy, whose loaded guns on the other side of the river commanded the position. General Clauzel, in the true spirit of chivalry, kept his men from firing. His first duty, he said, was to respect the courage of the duchess. He could not order her to be fired upon when she was providing material for the noblest page in her history. The Duchess of Angoulême did not forget General Clauzel’s chivalrous conduct. When he afterwards fell a prisoner into the hands of the Royalists, she interceded with the King and saved his life.
But it was too evident that the duchess’s efforts were in vain. With tears in her eyes she thanked the National Guard for what they had done, and begged them, as a last favour, to lay down their arms and so avoid bloodshed. Then, with a sad heart, she set out for Pouillac, where she embarked for Spain. As she once more quitted the shore of France as an exile, she turned to the people who were assembled to witness her departure, and distributed amongst them the plume of white feathers which she wore in her hair. “Bring them back to me with better days,” she said, “and Marie Thérèse will show you she has a good memory, and has not forgotten her friends at Bordeaux.”
The King had fled already, and the Duc d’Angoulême was temporarily a prisoner. But who does not know the story of the Hundred Days? It was on the 3rd of April that the Duchess of Angoulême left France; on the 18th of June Napoleon staked and lost all on the field of Waterloo. Five weeks later the duchess was once more on her way to Paris, her path strewn with flowers and the air rent with shouts of welcome. Louis XVIII. was already there, and as she rejoined her uncle at the Tuileries, it might have seemed that the cries of the populace were but the echoes of those of the year before, which time had not yet allowed to die away.