We shall now, commencing with the ladies, throw a rapid glance over the
persons who, at the time of the consecration, formed the household of
the Duchess of Berry. The Princess had one lady of honor, one lady of
the bedchamber, and eleven lady companions, of whom three were
honorary. All were distinguished as much by their manners and
sentiments as by birth and education.
The lady of honor was the Marechale Oudinot, Duchess of Reggio, a lady
of the highest rank, who joined a large heart to a firm mind. Attached,
through her family, to the religious and monarchical principles of the
old regime, by her marriage to the glories of the imperial epic, she
represented at the court the ideas of pacification and fusion that
inspired the policy of Louis XVIII. Born in 1791, of Antoine de Coucy,
captain in the regiment of Artois, and of Gabrielle de Mersuay, she was
but two years old when her father and mother were thrown into the
dungeons of the Terror. Carried in the arms of a faithful
serving-woman, she visited the two prisoners, who escaped death. She
married one of Napoleon's most illustrious companions in arms, the
"modern Bayard," as he was called, the Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio,
who had received thirty-two wounds on the field of battle, and who, by
securing the passage of Beresina, deserved to be called the "saviour of
the army." He was wounded at the close of the Russian campaign. Then
his young wife crossed all Europe to go and care for him and saved him.
She was but twenty. She was only twenty-four when Louis XVIII. named
her lady of honor to the Duchess of Berry. Despite her extreme youth,
she filled her delicate functions with exquisite tact and precocious
wisdom, and from the first exercised a happy influence over the mind of
the Princess, who gladly listened to her counsels. Very active in work,
the lady of honor busied herself with untiring zeal with the details of
her charge. She was the directress, the secretary, the factotum, of the
Duchess of Berry. The Abbe Tripied, who pronounced her funeral eulogy
at Bar-le-Duc, May 21st, 1868, traced a very lifelike portrait of her.
Let us hear the ecclesiastic witness of the high virtues of this truly
superior woman.
"She bore," he said, "with equal force and sagacity her titles of lady
of honor and Duchess of Reggio. Proud of her blason, where were crossed
the arms of the old and of the new nobility, and where she saw, as did
the King, a sign, as it were, of reconciliation and peace, she bore it
high and firm, and defended it in its new glories, against insulting
attacks. An ornament to the court, by her graces and her high
distinction, she displayed there, for the cause of the good, all the
resources of her mind and the riches of her heart. But none of the
seductions and agitations she met there disturbed the limpidity of her
pure soul. Malignity, itself at bay, was forced to recognize and avow
that in the Duchess of Reggio no other stain could be found than the
ink-stains she sometimes allowed her pen to make upon her finger. In
her greatness, this noble woman saw, before all, the side of duty."
In 1832, when the Duchess of Berry was imprisoned in the citadel of
Blaye, her former lady of honor asked, without being able to obtain
that favor, the privilege of sharing her captivity. The Duchess of
Reggio to the last set an example of devotion and of all the virtues.
She was so gracious and affable that one day some one remarked: "When
the Duchess gives you advice, it seems as if she were asking a service
of you." When the noble lady died, April 18th, 1868, at Bar-le-Duc,
where her good works and her intelligent charity had made her beloved,
they wished to give her name to one of the streets of the city, and as
they already had the Rue Oudinot and the Place Reggio, one of the
streets was called the Rue de La Marechale.
The lady of the bedchamber of the Duchess of Berry and her lady
companions all belonged to the old aristocracy. The Countess of
Noailles, lady of the bedchamber, a woman full of intelligence, and
very beautiful, a mother worthy of all praise, was the daughter of the
Duke de Talleyrand, the niece of the Prince de Talleyrand, the wife of
Count Just de Noailles, second son of the Prince of Poix.
The Duchess of Berry had eight lady companions: the Countess of
Bouille, the Countess d'Hautefort, the Marchioness of Bethisy, the
Marchioness of Gourgues, the Countess of Casteja, the Countess of
Rosanbo, the Marchioness of Podenas; and three whose title was
honorary, the Marchioness of Lauriston, the Countess Charles de
Gontaut, and the Countess de La Rochejaquelein.
The Countess of Bouille, who at the time of the coronation of Charles
X. was about forty years old, was a creole, very agreeable and much
respected.
The Countess d'Hautefort, nee Maille-Latour-Landry, forty-one years
old, married to a colonel who belonged to the fourth company of the
bodyguards, was a woman of much intelligence, charmingly natural, and
an excellent musician. She shared in 1832 the captivity of the Duchess
of Berry.
Very distinguished in manner and sentiment as in birth, the Marchioness
Charles de Bethisy, married to a lieutenant-general and peer of France;
the Countess of Gourgues, nee Montboissier, married to a master of
requests, a deputy; the Countess of Mefflay, a young and charming
woman, daughter of the Countess of Latour, whom the Duchess of Berry
had as governess in the Two Sicilies, and wife of the Count Meffray,
receiver-general of Gers; the Viscountess of Casteja, daughter of the
Marquis of Bombelles, major-general, ambassador of Louis XVI. at Lisbon
and Vienna, then priest, Canon of Breslau, Bishop of Amiens, First
Almoner of the Duchess of Berry (he died in 1822, and one of his sons,
Charles de Bombelles, married morganatically the Empress Marie-Louise,
in 1833); the Countess of Rosanbo, daughter of the Count of Mesnard;
the Marchioness of Podenas, wife of a lieutenant-colonel; the
Marchioness of Lauriston, wife of the marshal, formerly lady of the
palace to the Empress Josephine and the Empress Marie-Louise; the
Countess Charles de Gontaut, whose husband was chamberlain of the
Emperor, a very young and very pretty woman, remarkable for the
vivacity of her mind; the Countess de La Rochejaquelein, nee Duras, a
very pious and very charitable woman, whose husband was a
major-general. In fact, the circle around the Duchess of Berry was
perfection. The greatest ladies of France were by her side, and the
society of the Petit Chateau, as the Pavilion de Marsan was called, was
certainly fitted to give the tone to the principal salons of Paris.
The Duchess of Berry had as chevalier d'honneur a great lord, very
learned, known for his unchangeable devotion to royalty, the Duke de
Sevis (born in 1755, died in 1830). The Duke, who emigrated and was
wounded at Quiberon, held himself apart during the Empire, and
published highly esteemed writings on finance, some Memoirs, and a
Recueil de Souvenirs et Portraits. He was a peer of France and member
of the French Academy. For adjunct to the chevalier d'honneur, the
Duchess had the Count Emmanuel de Brissac, one of the finest characters
of the court, married to a Montmorency.
Her first equerry was the Count Charles de Mesnard, a Vendean gentleman
of proven devotion. The Count Charles de Mesnard was born at Lugon, in
1769, the same year as Napoleon, whose fellow-pupil he was at Brienne.
Belonging to one of those old houses of simple gentlemen who have the
antiquity of the greatest races, he was son of a major-general who
distinguished himself in the Seven Years War, and who at the close of
the old regime was gentleman of the chamber of the Count of Provence
(Louis XVIII.), and captain of the Guards of the Gate of this Prince.
He emigrated, and served in the ranks of the army of Conde, with his
older brother, the Count Edouard de Mesnard, married to Mademoiselle de
Caumont-Laforce, daughter of the former governess of the children of
the Count d'Artois (Charles X.), and sister of the Countess of Balbi.
The Count Edouard de Mesnard, having entered Paris secretly, was shot
there as emigre, October 27th, 1797, despite all the efforts of the
wife of General Bonaparte to save him. When he was going to his death,
his eyes met, on the boulevard, those of one of his friends, the
Marquis of Galard, who had returned with him secretly. The condemned
man had the presence of mind to seem not to recognize the passer-by,
and the latter was saved, as he himself related with emotion sixty
years afterward.
At the commencement of the Empire, the Count Charles de Mesnard was
living at London, where he was reduced to gaining his living by copying
music, when the Emperor offered to restore his confiscated property if
he would come to France and unite with the new regime. The Count of
Mesnard preferred to remain in England near the Duke of Berry, who
showed great affection for him. The Restoration compensated the
faithful companion of exile. He was a peer of France and Charles X.
treated him as a friend. He had married, during the Emigration, an
English lady, Mrs. Sarah Mason, widow of General Blondell, by whom he
had a daughter, Aglae, who was named a lady companion to the Duchess of
Berry, at the time of her marriage, in 1825, with the Count Ludovic de
Rosanbo, and a son, Ferdinand, married in 1829, to Mademoiselle de
Bellissen.
The Princess had for equerry-de-main, the Viscount d'Hanache; for
honorary equerry, the Baron of Fontanes; for equerry porte-manteau, M.
Gory. Her secretary of orders was the Marquis de Sassenay, who bore,
besides, the title of Administrator of the Finances and Treasurer of
Madame. He had under his orders a controller-general, M. Michals, who
was of such integrity and devotion that when, after the Revolution of
July, he presented himself at Holyrood to give in his accounts to the
Duchess of Berry, she made him a present of her portrait.
There was not a private household in France where more order reigned
than in that of Madame. The chief of each service,--the Duchess of
Reggio, the Viscount Just de Noailles, the Count Emmanuel de Brissac,
and the Count of Mesnard, presented his or her budget and arranged the
expenditures in advance with the Princess. This budget being paid by
twelfths before the 15th of the following month, she required to have
submitted to her the receipts of the month past. This did not prevent
Madame from being exceedingly generous. One day she learned that a poor
woman had just brought three children into the world and knew not how
to pay for three nurses, three layettes, three cradles. Instantly she
wished to relieve her. But it was the end of the month; the money of
all the services had been spent.
"Lend me something," she said to the controller-general of her
household; "you will trust me; no one will trust this unfortunate
woman."
As M. Nettement remarked: "The Duchess of Berry held it as a principle
that princes should be like the sun which draws water from the streams
only to return it in dew and rain. She considered her civil list as the
property of all, administered by her. She was to be seen at all
expositions and in all the shops, buying whatever was offered that was
most remarkable. Sometimes she kept these purchases, sometimes she sent
them to her family at Naples, Vienna, Madrid, and her letters used
warmly to recommend in foreign cities whatever was useful or beautiful
in France. She was thus in every way the Providence of the arts, of
industry, and commerce."
To sum up, the household of the Duchess of Berry worked to perfection,
and Madame, always affable and good, inspired a profound devotion in
all about her.