The Duc and the Duchesse d'Angoulême.
I go to Butschirad.
The Dauphine had urged me to take the trip of Butschirad. Messieurs Dufougerais[261] and Nugent[262] escorted me on my embassy to Charles X. on the evening of my arrival in Prague. They were at the head of the deputation of the young men and were going to complete the negotiations which had been entered into on the subject of the presentation. The former of the two, who had been implicated in my trial before the Assize-court, had pleaded his case with great intelligence; the second had just finished a term of imprisonment of eight months for a royalist newspaper offense. The author of the Génie du Christianisme, therefore, had the honour of going to wait on the Most Christian King seated in a hired calash between the author of the Mode and the author of the Revenant.
Prague, 30 September 1833.
Butschirad is a villa belonging to the Grand-duke of Tuscany at about six leagues from Prague, on the road to Carlsbad. The Austrian Princes have their ancestral possessions in their own country and are merely owners for life on the other side of the Alps: they hold Italy on lease. Butschirad is reached by a triple avenue of apple-trees. The villa makes no show; with its out-houses, it looks like a fine farm-house: it stands in the middle of a bare plain and the view commands a hamlet with green trees and a tower. The inside of the house is an Italian misconception, in the latitude of 50 degrees: large living-rooms without stoves or chimneys. The apartments are enriched in a melancholy fashion with the spoils of Holyrood. The palace of James II., which Charles X. refurnished[263], has supplied Butschirad, by the removal, with its carpets and chairs.