THE ORLEANS PRINCES
It must be owned that the Orleans Princes, at the time of which I am
speaking, had far more adherents than the Comte de Chambord.
Whilst the latter kept aloof from the world in his haughty attitude, his
cousins sought popularity by all means in their power, and wherever they
could hope to find it. They had in their favour, first their number, the
beauty of their women, their incontestable bravery, their unwearying
energy, and their courting of the mob. Against them was their excessive
avarice, and the eagerness with which they had hastened, as soon as the
doors of their fatherland were opened to them once more, to claim their
confiscated millions without allowing their thoughts to dwell for one
moment on the sad state in which their country was finding itself, nor
on the tremendous sacrifices it was voluntarily making in order to pay
the enormous war contribution exacted by Germany, in accordance with the
Treaty of Frankfurt. In the claim they had put forward they had been
encouraged by M. Thiers, who, shrewd politician that he was, wanted to
make them unpopular as pretenders, and to minimise the influence they
might otherwise have acquired. The fact was that this hasty step, which
would have passed unnoticed had they attempted it later on, made them
lose considerable ground among people who would otherwise have looked up
to them, because the idea of a Republic had not yet become familiar to
the public mind, and because the Orleans dynasty was essentially a
democratic and middle-class one, whose instincts did not clash with
those of the governing and intellectual classes of France after the war
that had driven the Bonapartes out of the country. The reign of Louis
Philippe had not left bad memories; many even regretted it. The King as
well as his family had known how to appeal to the mob, and France had
reached an epoch in her history, where the mob held the first place and
had to be reckoned with. The King’s sons had frequented public colleges,
associated with other young men of their age, and thus had given
satisfaction to the snobbish leanings which are perhaps more developed
in Frenchmen than in any other nation, in spite of all their outcries
for equality and the abolition of all the privileges enjoyed in former
times by the upper classes.
The Duc d’Aumale had even made himself popular, with a low kind of
popularity of which he never succeeded in getting rid during the whole
course of his life; but still he was popular in his way. I shall talk of
him later on, as he deserves a chapter to himself, and Chantilly, too,
is worthy of a description not embodied in a few words. He was always
considered to be the clever man of his family, and was the most
respected by his numerous nephews and nieces, partly on account of his
large fortune, the inheritance of the Princess de Condé, and bequeathed
to him by the last of that name and race. He had become the master of
the old home of the Condés, made illustrious by the Connétable de
Montmorency, and the brave warrior known to his contemporaries by the
name of Monsieur le Prince, and to history under that of the Great
Condé. There was much of chivalry in the nature of the Duc d’Aumale,
more so, perhaps, than in the character of his brothers, who were less
princely in their manners and ways.
The head of this historic family, the Comte de Paris can be described in
very few words: he was essentially an honest man, but devoid of
initiative; timid in the manifestation of his opinions; an excellent
soldier, as he proved himself to be during the American war in which he
took part as a volunteer, but a mediocre officer--one born to obedience
but not reared to command; weak in character, but firm in his
convictions; an excellent father, a devoted husband, a dutiful son; a
perfect King had he ever become one, so long as his country was
prosperous, but an incapable one had it found itself in difficulties; a
man always careful to fulfil his duties, but certainly not one who
inspired love for those duties outside his own immediate family circle.
He did not possess any of the qualities of a Pretender, except domestic
virtues, which no one asked of him, and which even his best friends did
not require. Though he was head of his house, he never could divest
himself of an excess of deference to the advice of his uncles, and could
rarely muster enough courage to speak or to act independently of them.
The only time he allowed himself to indulge in politics was at the
period of the famous Boulangist agitation, when he made the rather naïve
remark that he had been induced to take part in that intrigue because a
great Christian like the Count de Mun, and a great lady like the
Duchesse d’Uzès, were attracted to it. This attempt to restore the
throne of Louis Philippe by the help of an adventurer with a white
feather in his cap had, as is known, ended in a ridicule that had
considerably shaken the personal position of the Comte de Paris, already
made insecure through his own and his partisans’ many mistakes. The
Comte had essentially a reasoning mind, but was always filled with
abstract ideas; he could never put things on a practical ground. He had
few illusions but a false look out, as well as a wrong point of view.
Instead of adopting one of two lines of conduct which would have been
equally dignified--submission to the Comte de Chambord, or brave
adherence to the principles of his ancestors and those of that dynasty
of July, “la monarchie de juillet,” as it was still called in France--he
had taken a middle course, that of recognising the personality but not
the rights of his cousin. This made him bow down before the universal
suffrage that had proclaimed the Republic in the kingdom of which he
would in any case have been the lawful heir. He thought that by his
attitude of absolute submission to the wishes of the nation he would
have inspired it with the desire to call him to its head. A false
reasoning if ever there was one, that was to cause him to take many
erratic and undignified steps, and which at last exiled him anew; an
exile in which he remained until his death.
The only time that the Comte de Paris ventured openly upon a step which
could be construed as a manifestation of his pretensions to the throne
of France was on the occasion of the wedding of his eldest daughter,
Queen Amélie of Portugal, when he gave in his Paris residence, the Hotel
Galliera, a reception at which all the pomp that attended royalty in
former days was displayed. It was as ill-timed as useless, and was the
pretext for his expulsion from his country, an expulsion that had been
asked for a long time since by the Republican leaders, who did not care
for the nation to become used to the continued presence of the
descendants of its former Kings. He did not attempt to resist, though it
is said that some of his partisans begged him to allow them to make a
manifestation in his favour; he embarked for British shores with a
resignation that would have been admirable in a private person, but
which was very near akin to cowardice in the representative of the
Divine rights of Kings, those rights that Henri IV. knew how to impose,
even on such great lords as the members of that powerful house of
Lorraine, who also, at one time, aspired to the throne that belonged to
him, and which he conquered at the point of his sword.
Philippe VII. was of a more pacific disposition than his illustrious
ancestor. He bade good-bye to his lovely castle of Eu, and settled at
Stowe House, the old residence of the Dukes of Buckingham, where he
ended his life, after cruel sufferings, borne with the patience that was
the distinctive feature of his honest, straightforward, and distinctly
middle-class character. With the Comte de Chambord had disappeared a
principle together with a man; when the Comte de Paris expired in his
turn, there died a good and virtuous person but nothing else. He
represented in the world his own estimable self, but not the royalty to
which he had been born.
About his son, little need be said. Gifted with a more adventurous
spirit than that of his father, the Duc d’Orleans began his career by
risking imprisonment in France, when he appeared there to enrol himself
in the ranks of her army. He has never made the least attempt to secure
a crown which does not even tempt him. He has led the life of an idle
man of means, travelling about, playing at science when it suited him,
ignorant of the great aims of life; a man not even to be pitied, because
misfortune has never touched him; one who has never known what society,
his country, and the great name he bears required of him; who has
laughed at what his forefathers have always respected; who calls himself
the heir to all the Bourbons that have left their impress on history,
but who would be very sorry had he ever to follow in their footsteps;
the Republic can well afford to ignore him, because he would be the
first to be embarrassed by its fall.
The Duc d’Orleans had no children by his marriage with an Austrian
Archduchess, from whom he parted very soon after they had been united.
His only brother, the Duke of Montpensier, is still unmarried, and at
present the grandchildren of the Duc de Chartres constitute the hope of
the partisans of the Orleans dynasty.
The Duc de Chartres was the one brilliant figure among the descendants
of King Louis Philippe. There was something dashing about him that
appealed to the imagination of people. When the Franco-German War broke
out, he at once offered his services first to the Imperial, afterwards
to the Republican, government, and when they had both refused them, he
succeeded in entering a regiment of volunteers, under the assumed name
of Robert Le Fort, only the Comtesse de Vallon and one or two other
friends being aware of his identity.
When the campaign was over he remained on active service, until the
proscription that fell on his brother had also an influence upon his
fate, and obliged him to retire into private life. He had been a great
favourite in Parisian society; men appreciated his wit, and women his
chivalrous devotion to them. It is not an indiscretion to say that his
love affairs with the Princesse de Sagan were at one time a general
subject of conversation. He was always a welcome guest at a dinner
table, and a conspicuous figure in the hunting field, and succeeded
better than any of his uncles and cousins in winning for himself the
sympathies even of Republicans, who secretly feared his popularity among
the army and in his own regiment.
He was a born soldier, with all the intrepidity of the fighter who never
shirks a battlefield. People liked him and respected him, because with
all the sterling qualities of his elder brother, the Comte de Paris, he
had none of the latter’s apathy. Perhaps, if he had not been a younger
son, he might have made an effort to win back the throne for his race.
But reared in principles of absolute submission to the head of his
house, he never criticised anything his elders did, and though I have
known him intimately and well, the only time when I have heard him talk
politics was one afternoon at his little country home of St. Firmin on
the borders of the Forest of Chantilly, when the conversation turned on
the trial of Marshal Bazaine, over which the Duc d’Aumale had presided.
The Duc de Chartres happened to be in a communicative mood, and
expressed the opinion that he thought it had been a mistake on the part
of his uncle to have accepted the task of judging the unfortunate
commander-in-chief of the army of Metz. He said that a member of the
house of Bourbon ought not to have consented to appear before the public
as a kind of avenger of wrongs in which politics had had so great a
part. And he added these significant words: “We Orleans, more than even
members of other royal houses, ought to avoid showing ourselves as
arbiters of another man’s fate. It is quite enough to have to carry into
history the stigma that attaches to us ever since the trial of Louis
XVI.”
I looked up to him rather in astonishment.
“Yes,” he said, “I understand what you mean, and that you are surprised
to hear me talk in the way I do, but you must not think that I have not
often given a thought to that fatal act of my ancestor, when he helped
an ungrateful nation to murder its legitimate King. You see, I belong to
another generation than the one which saw all those horrors, and I
cannot consider them without deep regret and shame. I can understand a
good many things--cruelty, ambition, ingratitude, wickedness even--I
cannot admit crimes against nature, and the vote of the Duc d’Orleans
belonged to that kind of crime. Beside it, the so-called--because I
cannot look at it in that light since it was the result of the free
choice of a great nation--the so-called usurpation of my grandfather was
a small matter. It only offended and sinned against a principle, it did
not offend the natural feelings that ought always to be sacred to every
man, no matter what position he holds in life. And when I reflect on the
trial of Marshal Bazaine, I cannot help thinking that my uncle would
have been better advised if he had kept aloof, and left to others
the task of asking from that victim of his ambition or of
circumstances--which it was, it is not for me to say--an account of his
actions and an explanation of his deeds.”
The Duc de Chartres had married his cousin, the daughter of the Prince
de Joinville and of a Brazilian Princess. His wife was a very
distinguished woman, who by her tact and her cleverness made herself
universally liked. They had several children, and their eldest daughter,
the Princess Marie, who was married to a Prince belonging to the Royal
House of Denmark, played at one time rather an important part in
European politics, thanks to the influence which she exercised over the
mind of the Emperor Alexander III. of Russia. She died young, and the
Duc did not survive her long. The Duchesse de Chartres, widowed and past
middle age, now spends her time in her little home at St. Firmin, having
sold the house in the Rue Jean Goujon, where she had lived with her
husband, and which at one time was a centre of reunion for a certain
portion of Paris society. The only members of the family of Orleans whom
one can meet in the salons of the French aristocracy are the Duc and the
Duchesse de Vendôme, who live at Neuilly, and go about a good deal. The
Comtesse de Paris comes sometimes to the capital, but never stays there
longer than for a few days, spending the rest of her time either in her
palace of Villamanrique in Spain, or in her castle of Randan, near
Vichy, where her life is entirely given up to practices of devotion and
good deeds. All her daughters are married. Tragedy has broken the life
of her eldest daughter, Queen Amélie of Portugal, but the Comtesse is
placid by nature, possessing something of the fatalism that ruled the
Comte de Paris, and that never disputes the decrees of a Providence it
has learned to bless whether it sends good or evil to mankind.
The future of the Orleans family, that promised to become so important
on returning to France after the fall of the Empire, proved to be quite
insignificant in so far as the destiny of France was concerned. The
Orleans had neither the courage nor the energy, nor especially the
unselfishness, to try to win back for themselves the position which they
had lost. They never had enough initiative, much less determination to
brave public opinion, and eat humble pie before the Comte de Chambord.
These things alone could have put them back on the height whence they
had fallen. But the descendants of Louis Philippe never could make up
their minds to any resolution, whether grave or frivolous. They always
professed the fallacious opinion that the will of a nation ought to be
respected, no matter how or in what way expressed. France was for them a
master before whose decrees they never for one moment felt the
temptation to rebel. They accepted those decrees so well that now no one
dreams of looking upon them as pretenders to anything, be it a throne,
or simply the wish to have their word considered at times when the vital
interests of their country are at stake. They always talk, or rather
allow their followers to talk, of their duties, of their fidelity to the
principles that made their ancestors great, but in reality they have not
the slightest wish to put forward their persons in order to secure to
their race anything beyond the millions which they already possess. The
Comte de Paris was a dreamer; the Duc de Nemours a saint; the Duc de
Chartres a soldier, never looking beyond the field of a soldier’s
activity; the Duc d’Orleans a man of the world; the Duc d’Aumale a
scholar, immersed in his books and his artistic tastes. Among them all a
man was wanted, and a King could not be found.