“General, I have a fact, a very solemn fact, to reveal to you. It is the testament of a dying woman. My brother is not dead; it has been the nightmare of my life. Promise me to take the necessary steps to trace him. France will not be happy nor at peace till he is on the throne of his fathers.”
The story is probably apocryphal; if true, it is a pity that the dying duchess left no documentary proof of her belief, even though it involved the awful confession that it was her selfishness that had cheated her brother out of a throne and rendered him a nameless outcast.
George Sand’s Curiosity
George Sand married in early life a coarse type of man, Casimir Dudevant. Their union was not a happy one. It happened that she found a packet in her husband’s desk, marked, “Not to be opened until after my death.” She wrote of this in her correspondence:
“I had not the patience to wait till widowhood. No one can be sure of surviving anybody. I assumed that my husband had died, and I was very glad to learn what he thought of me while he was alive. Since the package was addressed to me, it was not dishonorable for me to open it.”
And so she opened it. It proved to be his will, but containing, as a preamble, his curses on her, expressions of contempt, and all the vulgar outpouring of an evil temper and angry passion. At once she formed the great decision of her life.
She went to her husband as he was opening a bottle, and flung the document upon the table. He cowered at her glance, at her firmness, and at her cold hatred. He grumbled and argued and entreated; but all that his wife would say in answer was:
“I must have an allowance. I am going to Paris, and my children are to remain here at Nohant.”
She went into the Latin Quarter, and not only Paris but the world heard much of her. She wrote, “The proprieties are the guiding principle of people without soul or virtue,” and, as is well known, her life was in accord with this sentiment.
Charles Dickens on Elderly Testators