Paris, Rue d'Enfer, 25 August 1833.

While I was beginning to breathe, I saw one morning the traveller enter my house who had handed a packet from me to Madame la Duchesse de Berry at Palermo; he brought me this reply from the Princess:

Letter from Madame de Berry.

"Naples, 10 August 1833.

"I have written you a line, monsieur le vicomte, to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, wishing to have a safe opportunity of speaking to you of my gratitude for what you have seen and done in Prague. It seems to me that they let you see very little, but enough, however, to enable you to judge that, despite the methods employed, the result, in so far as our dear child is concerned, is not what one might fear. I am very glad to receive this assurance from you; but I hear from Paris that M. Barrande has been sent away. What is to be done in this? How I long to be at my post!

"As to the requests which I asked you to make (and which were not quite welcomed), they have proved by their action that they were no better informed than I: for I was not in any need of what I asked, having in no way lost my rights.

"I am going to ask your advice to reply to the solicitations which I receive from all sides. You will make such use of what follows as, in your wisdom, you think proper. Royalist France, the people devoted to Henry V. look to his mother, now at last free, to issue a proclamation.

"I left at Blaye a few lines which must be known to-day; they expect more from me; they want to know the sad story of my detention during seven months in that impenetrable fortress. It ought to be made known in its fullest details; let the cause be seen, in this story, of all the tears and griefs that have broken my heart. Men will learn from it the moral tortures which I have been made to suffer. Justice must be done in it to them to whom it belongs; but also it must reveal the atrocious measures taken against a defenseless woman, defenseless because she was always refused a council, by a Government having her kinsman at its head, in order to tear from me a secret which, in any case, could not concern politics and the discovery of which ought not to change my situation if I was an object of dread to the French Government, which had the power of guarding me, but not the right, without a trial which I claimed more than once.

"But my kinsman, the husband of my aunt, the head of a family which, in spite of the general and so justly wide-spread opinion against it, I had allowed to hope for the hand of my daughter, Louis-Philippe in short, thinking me to be with child and unmarried (which would have decided any other family to open the doors of my prison), had every form of moral torture inflicted on me to force me to take steps by means of which he expected to be able to establish his niece's dishonour. For the rest, if I am bound to explain myself positively as to my declarations and their motives, without entering into any details as to my private life, for which I am accountable to no one, I will say in all truth that they were torn from me by my vexations, my moral tortures and the hope of recovering my liberty.

"The bearer will give you details and tell you of the forced uncertainty as to the moment of my journey and its destination, which interfered with my wish to avail myself of your obliging offer by inviting you to join me before I went to Prague, as I have great need of your advice. To-day it would be too late, as I wish to be with my children as soon as possible. But, as nothing is certain in this world and as I am used to disappointments, if my arrival in Prague should, against my wish, be delayed, I rely surely upon seeing you at the place where I shall be obliged to stop and will write to you from there; if, on the contrary, I reach my son as soon as I hope, you know better than I if you ought to come there. I can only assure you of the pleasure it would give me to see you at all times and places.

"Marie Caroline."

Naples, 18 August 1833.

"Our friend has not been able to start yet and I have received news of what is happening in Prague which is not of a nature calculated to diminish my longing to go there, but which also makes the need of your advice more urgent. If, therefore, you are able to proceed to Venice without delay, you will find me there, or else letters left at the post-office telling you where you can join me. I shall travel part of the journey with some people for whom I entertain feelings of great friendship and gratitude: M.[56] and Madame de Bauffremont[57]. We often speak of you; their devotion to myself and to our Henry makes them long to see you arrive. M. de Mesnard[58] shares that longing."

Madame de Berry refers in her letter to a little manifesto[59] which was issued after she left Blaye and which was of no great value, because it said neither yes nor no. The letter, on the other hand, is curious as an historical document, since it reveals the feelings of the Princess towards her kinsmen-gaolers and points to the sufferings endured by her. Marie-Caroline's reflections are just; she expresses them with spirit and pride. Again, one likes to see that courageous and devoted mother, whether fettered or free, constantly occupied with the interests of her son. There, at least in that heart, are youth and life to be found. It cost me an effort once more to undertake a long journey; but I was too much touched by the confidence of that poor Princess to refuse to obey her wishes and to abandon her on the high-road. M. Jauge came to the assistance of my poverty, as he had done the first time.

I took the field again with a dozen volumes scattered around me. Now, while I was peregrinating da capo in the Prince de Bénévent's calash, he was eating in London in the manger of his fifth master, in expectation of the accident which will send him, perhaps, to sleep at Westminster, among saints, kings and wise men: a burial to which his religion, fidelity and virtues have justly entitled him.

[1] This book was written on the road from Carlsbad to Paris, from the 1st to the 5th of June 1833, and in Paris, in the Rue d'Enfer, from the 6th of June to the 25th of August 1833.—T.

[2] The author addresses an imaginary Cynthia. Cynthia was one of the surnames of Diana, from Mount Cynthus, where she was born.—B.