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On the coffin of the ex-king was inscribed,--

"Here lieth the High, the Potent, and most Excellent Prince, Charles Tenth of that name; by the Grace of God King of France and of Navarre. Died at Goritz, Nov. 6, 1836, aged 79 years and 28 days."

All the courts of Europe put on mourning for him, that of France excepted. The latter part of his life, with its reverses and humiliations, he considered an expiation, not for his political errors, but for the sins of his youth.

As he drew near his end, his yearnings after his lost country increased more and more. He firmly believed that the day would come when his family would be restored to the throne of France, but he believed that it would not be by conspiracy or revolt, but by the direct interposition of God. That time did almost come in 1871, after the Commune.

LOUIS PHILIPPE AND HIS FAMILY.

It is hardly necessary for us to enter largely into French politics at this period. The government was supposed to be a monarchy planted upon republican institutions. The law recognized no hereditary aristocracy. There was a chamber of peers, but the peers bore no titles, and were chosen only for life. The dukes, marquises, and counts of the old r?gime retained their titles only by courtesy.

The next trouble in the new reign was the alienation of public favor from Lafayette, who had done so much to place the king upon the throne. He was accused by one party of truckling to the new court, by the other of being too much attached to revolutionary methods and republican institutions. He was removed from the command of the National Guard, and his office of commander-in-chief of that body was abolished.

All Europe becomes "a troubled sea" when a storm breaks over France. "I never remember," writes Greville at this period, "days like these, nor read of such,--the terror and lively expectation that prevails, and the way in which people's minds are turned backward and forward from France to Ireland, then range exclusively from Poland to Piedmont, and fix again on the burnings, riots, and executions that are going on in England."

The eldest son, Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, was an extraordinarily fine young man, far more a favorite with the French people than his father. Had he not been killed in a carriage accident in 1842, he might now, in his old age, have been seated on the French throne.

The eldest daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Louise, was married, soon after her father's elevation to the throne, to King Leopold of Belgium, widower of the English Princess Charlotte, and uncle to Prince Albert and to Queen Victoria. The French princess thus became, by her marriage, aunt to these high personages. They were deeply attached to her. She named her eldest daughter Charlotte, after the lamented first wife of her husband. The name was Italianized into Carlotta,--the poor Carlotta whose reason and happiness were destroyed by the misfortunes of her husband in Mexico.

The third son was Philippe, Prince de Joinville, the sailor. He chose a bride for himself at the court of Brazil, and brought her home in his frigate, the "Belle Poule."

The charming artist daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Marie, pupil and friend of Ary Scheffer, the artist, married the Duke of W?rtemberg, and died early of consumption. Her only child was sent to France, and placed under the care of his grandmother. Princess Cl?mentine married a colonel in the Austrian service, a prince of the Catholic branch of the house of Coburg. Her son is Prince Ferdinand, the present ruler of Bulgaria.

The marriage of Louis Philippe's fifth son, the Duc de Montpensier, with the Infanta Luisa is so closely connected with Louis Philippe's downfall that it can be better told elsewhere; but we may here say a few words about the fortunes of Henri, Duc d'Aumale, the king's fourth son, who has proved himself a man brave, generous, patriotic and high-minded, a soldier, a statesman, an historian, patron of art, and in all these things a man eminent among his fellows. He was only a school-boy when a tragic and discreditable event made him heir of the great house of Cond?, and endowed him with wealth that he refuses to pass on to his family, proposing at his death to present it to the French people and the French Academy.

In 1830 the old duke, worn out with sorrows and excesses, was completely under the power of an English adventuress, a Madame de Feuch?res. He had settled on her his Ch?teau de Saint-Leu, together with very large sums of money. Several years before 1830 it had occurred to Madame de Feuch?res that the De Rohans, who were related to the duke on his mother's side, might dispute these gifts and bequests, and by way of making herself secure, she sought the protection of Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans. She offered to use her influence with the Duke of Bourbon to induce him to make the Duc d'Aumale, who was his godson, his heir, if Louis Philippe would engage to stand her friend in any trouble.

There was certainly no proof that Madame de Feuch?res had had any hand in the murder of the old man who had plotted to escape from her, and who had expressed to others his dread of the tyranny she exercised over him; but there was every ground for strong suspicion, and the public lost no time in fastening part of the odium that attached to the supposed murderess on the king, whose family had so greatly benefited by her influence over the last head of the house of Cond?. She retained her ill-gotten wealth, and removed at once to Paris. She had been engaged in stock operations for some time, and now gave herself up to them, winning enormous sums.

The new throne was sadly shaken by these events, added to discontents concerning the king's prudent policy of non-intervention in the attempted revolutions of other countries, which followed that of France in 1830 and 1831. The next very interesting event of this reign was the escapade and the discomfiture of the young Duchesse de Berri.

The question of the invasion of France with foreign troops was excitedly argued at Massa. The duchess wished above all things to get rid of the tutelage of M. de Blancas, and she was disposed to favor, to a certain extent, the more moderate views of Chateaubriand. After endless quarrels she succeeded in sending off the duke to Holyrood, and was left to take her own way.

April 14, 1832, was fixed upon for leaving Massa. It was given out that the duchess, was going to Florence. At nightfall a carriage, containing the duchess, with two ladies and a gentleman of her suite, drove out of Massa and waited under the shadow of the city wall. While a footman was absorbing the attention of the coachman by giving him some minute, unnecessary orders, Madame slipped out of the carriage door with one of her ladies, while two others, who were standing ready in the darkness, took their places. The carriage rolled away towards Florence, while Madame and her party, stealing along under the dark shadow of the city wall, made their way to the port, where a steamer was to take them on board.

That steamer was the "Carlo Alberto," a little vessel which had been already used by some republican conspirators, and had been purchased for the service of Marie Caroline. It had some of her most devoted adherents on board, but the captain was in ignorance. He thought himself bound for Genoa, and was inclined to disobey when his passengers ordered him to lay to off the harbor of Massa. However, they used force, and at three in the morning Marie Caroline, who was sleeping, wrapped in her cloak, upon the sand, was roused, put on board a little boat, and carried out to the steamer. She had a tempestuous passage of four days to Marseilles. The steamer ran out of coal, and had to put into Nice. At last, in a heavy sea which threatened to dash small craft to pieces, a fishing-boat approached the "Carlo Alberto," containing some of the duchess's most devoted friends. With great danger she was transferred to it, and was landed on the French coast. She scrambled up slippery and precipitous rocks, and reached a place of safety. But the delay in the arrival of her steamer had been fatal to her enterprise. A French gentleman in the secret had hired a small boat, and put out to sea in the storm to see if he could perceive the missing vessel. His conduct excited the suspicion of his crew, who talked about it at a wine-shop, where they met other sailors, who had their story to tell of a lady landed mysteriously a few hours before at a dangerous and lonely spot a few miles away. The two accounts soon reached the ears of the police, and Marseilles was on the alert, when a party of young men, with their swords drawn and waving white handkerchiefs, precipitated their enterprise, by appearing in the streets and striving to rouse the populace. They were arrested, as were also the passengers left on board the "Carlo Alberto,"--among them was a lady who deceived the police into a belief that she was the Duchesse de Bern.

Under cover of this mistake the duchess, finding that all hope was over in the southern provinces, resolved to cross France to La Vend?e. At Massa she had had a dream. She thought the Duc de Bern had appeared to her and said: "You will not succeed in the South, but you will prosper in La Vend?e."

She quitted the hut in which she had been concealed, made her way on foot through a forest, lost herself, and had to sleep in the vacant cabin of a woodcutter. The next night she passed under the roof of a republican, who respected her sex and would not betray her. She then reached the ch?teau of a Legitimist nobleman with the appropriate name of M. de Bonrecueil. Thence she started in the morning in a postchaise to cross all France along its public roads.

She accomplished her journey in safety, and fixed May 24, 1832, as the day for taking up arms. She made her headquarters at a Breton farm-house, Les Meliers. She wore the costume of a boy,--a peasant of La Vend?e--and called herself Petit Pierre.

On May 21, three days before the date fixed upon for the rising, she was waited upon by the chiefs,--the men most likely to suffer in an abortive insurrection,--and was assured that the attempt would fail. Had the South risen, La Vend?e would have gladly joined the insurrection; but unsupported by the South, the proposed enterprise was too rash a venture. Overpowered by these arguments and the persuasions of those around her, Marie Caroline gave way, and consented to return to Scotland with a passport that had been provided for her. But in the night she retracted her consent, and insisted that the rising should take place upon the 3d of June. She was obeyed; but what little prospect of success there might have been at first, was destroyed by the counter-order of May 22. All who rose were at once put down by the king's troops, and atrocities on both sides were committed.

Nantes, the capital city of La Vend?e, was hostile to the duchess; in Nantes, therefore, she believed her enemies would never search for her. She took refuge there in the house of two elderly maiden ladies, the Demoiselles Duguigney, where she remained five months. They must have been months of anguish to her, and of unspeakable impatience. It is very possible that the Government did not care to find her. She was the queen's niece, and if captured what could be done with her? To set her free to hatch new plots would have been bitterly condemned by the republicans; to imprison her would have made an additional motive for royalist conspiracies; to execute her would have been impossible. Marie Caroline, however, had solved these difficult problems by her own misconduct.

For sixteen hours the duchess and two friends had been imprisoned in a tiny hiding-place, separated from the hearth by a thin iron sliding-panel, which, when the soldiers lit their fire, had grown red hot. The gentleman of the party was already badly burned, and the women were nearly suffocated. The gendarmes kicked away the fire, the panel was pushed back, and the duchess, pale and fainting, came forth and surrendered. The commander of the troops was sent for. To him she said: "General, I confide myself to your honor." He answered, "Madame, you are under the safeguard of the honor of France."

This capture was a great embarrassment to the Government. Pity for the devoted mother, the persecuted princess, the brave, self-sacrificing woman, stirred thousands of hearts. The duchess was sent at once to an old ch?teau called Blaye, on the banks of the Gironde, the estuary formed by the junction of the Dordogne and the Garonne. Tradition said that the old castle had been built by the paladin Orlando , and that he had been buried within its walls after he fell at Roncesvalles.

To the consternation and disgust of the Legitimists, the heroine of La Vend?e dropped from her pedestal and sank into the mire. "She lost everything," says Louis Blanc,--"even the sympathy of the most ultra-partisans of the Bourbon dynasty; and she deserved the fate that overtook her. It was the sequel to the discovery of a terrible secret,--a secret whose publicity became a just punishment for her having, in pursuit of her own purposes, let loose on France the dogs of civil war."

In the midst of enthusiasm for her courage and pity for her fate, rose a rumor that the duchess would shortly give birth to a child. It was even so. The news fell like a blow on the hearts of the royalists. If she had made a clandestine, morganatic marriage, she had by the law of France forfeited her position as regent during her son's minority; she had forgotten his claims on her and those of France. If there was no marriage, she had degraded herself past all sympathy. At any rate, now she was harmless. The policy of the Government was manifestly to let her child be born at Blaye, and then send her to her Neapolitan home.

Her desire was to leave Blaye before her confinement. In vain she pleaded her health and a tendency to consumption. The Government sent physicians to Blaye, among them the doctor who had attended the duchess after the birth of the Duc de Bordeaux; for it insisted on having full proof of her disgrace before releasing her. But before this disgrace was announced in Paris, twelve ardent young Legitimists had bound themselves to fight twelve duels with twelve leading men of the opposite party, who might, if she were brought to trial, injure her cause. The first of these duels took place; Armand Carrel, the journalist, being the liberal champion, while M. Roux-Laborie fought for the duchess. The duel was with swords, and lasted three minutes. Twice Carrel wounded his adversary in the arm; but as he rushed on him the third time, he received a deep wound in the abdomen. The news spread through Paris. The prime minister, M. Thiers, sent his private secretary for authentic news of Carrel's state. The attendants refused to allow the wounded man to be disturbed. "Let him see me," said Carrel; "for I have a favor to ask of M. Thiers,--that he will let no proceedings be taken against M. Roux-Laborie."

Government after this became anxious to quench the loyalty of the Duchesse de Berri's defenders as soon and as effectually as possible. The duel with Armand Carrel was fought Feb. 2, 1833; on the 22d of February General Bugeaud, commander of the fortress of Blaye, received from the duchess the following declaration:--

Under the pressure of circumstances and of measures taken by Government, I think it due to myself and to my children to declare that I have been privately married during my late sojourn in Italy. MARIE CAROLINE.

From that time up to the month of May the duchess continued to make vain efforts to obtain her release before the birth of her child. It had been intimated to her that she should be sent to Palermo as soon afterwards as she should be able to travel.

The Government took every precaution, that the event might be verified when it took place. Six or seven of the principal inhabitants of Blaye were stationed in an adjoining chamber, as is the custom at the birth of princes.

A little girl having been born, these witnesses were summoned to the chamber by Madame de Hautfort, the duchess's lady-in-waiting. The duchess answered their questions firmly, and on returning to the next room, her own physician declared on oath that the duchess was the lawful wife of Count Hector Luchesi-Palli, of the family of Campo Formio, of Naples, gentleman of the bedchamber to the king of the Two Sicilies, living at Palermo.

"I have been so tried that my poor head reels. The loss of my good and pious daughter made me almost crazy, but the care of my husband had somewhat calmed me, when God took him to himself. He died like a saint in my arms, with his children around him, smiling at me and pointing to heaven."

The duchess died suddenly at Brussels in 1870, aged seventy-one. "And," adds an intensely Legitimist writer from whom I have taken these details of her declining years, "had she lived till 1873, she would have given her son better advice than that he followed."

It was customary for King Louis Philippe to make a grand military promenade through Paris on one of the three days of July which during his reign were days of public festivity. On the morning of July 28, 1835, as the clock struck ten, the king, accompanied by his three elder sons, Marshals Mortier and Lobeau, his ministers, his staff, his household, and many generals, rode forth to review forty thousand troops along the Boulevards. At midday they reached the Boulevard du Temple. There, as the king was bending forward to receive a petition, a sudden volley of musketry took place, and the pavement was strewed with dead and dying. Marshal Mortier was killed, together with a number of officers of various grades, some bystanders, a young girl, and an old man. The king had not been shot, but as his horse started, he had received a severe contusion on the arm. The Duke of Orleans and the Prince de Joinville were slightly hurt. Smoke came pouring from the third-story windows of a house on the Boulevard. A man sprang from the window, seized a rope hanging from the chimney, and swung himself on to a lower roof. As he did so, he knocked down a flower-pot, which attracted attention to his movements. A police agent saw him, and a national guard arrested him. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his face was covered with blood. The infernal machine he had employed consisted of twenty-five gun-barrels on a stand so constructed that they could all be fired at once. Happily two did not go off, and four burst, wounding the wretch who had fired them. Instantly the reception of the king, which had been cold when he set forth, changed into rapturous enthusiasm. He and his sons had borne themselves with the greatest bravery.

The queen had been about to quit the Tuileries to witness the review, when the door of her dressing-room was pushed open, and a colonel burst in, exclaiming: "Madame, the king has been fired at. He is not hurt, nor the princes, but the Boulevard is strewn with corpses." The queen, raising her trembling hands to heaven, waited only for a repetition of his assurance that her dear ones were all safe, and then set out to find the king. She met him on the staircase, and husband and wife wept in each other's arms.

The queen then went to her sons, looked at them, and touched them, hardly able to believe that they were not seriously wounded, and turned away, shuddering, from the blood on M. Thiers' clothes. Then, returning to her chamber, she sent a note at once to her younger boys, D'Aumale and Montpensier, who were with their tutors at the Ch?teau d'Eu. It began with these words: "Fall down on your knees, my children; God has preserved your father."

Of course the Legitimists, and likewise the Republicans, were accused of inspiring the attempt of Fieschi. The trials, that took place about six months later, proved that the assassin Fieschi was a wretch bearing a strong resemblance to our own Guiteau.

The funeral ceremonies of the victims of the infernal machine were celebrated with great pomp. The affair led to a partial reconciliation between the new Government and the Legitimist clergy; it led also to certain restrictions on the Press and an added stringency in the punishment for crimes of the like character.

On Jan. 31, 1836, the trial of the prisoners took place before the Peers. The crowd of spectators was immense. There were five prisoners, but the eyes of the spectators were fixed on only three.

The first was a man under-sized, nervous and quick in his movements. His face, which was disfigured by recent scars, had an expression of cunning and impudence. His forehead was narrow, his hair cropped close, one corner of his mouth was disfigured by a scar, his smile was insolent, and so was his whole bearing. He seemed anxious to concentrate the attention of all present on himself, smiled and bowed to every one he knew, and seemed well satisfied with his odious importance.

The second was an old man, pale and ill. He bore himself with perfect calmness. He seated himself where he was told to sit, and gave no sign of emotion throughout the trial.

The third was utterly prostrated by fear.

The first was Fieschi; the second was called Morey; the third was a grocer named Pepin.

The two last had been arrested on the testimony of Nina Lassave, who had had Fieschi for her lover. The life of this man had been always base and infamous. He was a Corsican by birth, and had been a French soldier. He had fought bravely, but after his discharge he had been imprisoned for theft and counterfeiting. He led a wandering life from town to town, living on his wits and indulging all his vices. He had even succeeded in getting some small favors from Government; but finding that he could not long escape punishment for crimes known to the police, he undertook, apparently without any especial motive, the wholesale murder of king, court, and princes.

During his imprisonment his vanity had been so great that the officers of the Crown played upon it in order to obtain confessions and information.

The only witness against Morey was Nina Lassave, who insisted that, Fieschi having invented the murderous instrument, Morey had devised a use for it, and that Pepin had furnished the necessary funds for its completion.

I give Louis Blanc's account of Fieschi's behavior on his trial, because when foreign nations have reproached us for the scandal of the license granted to the murderer of President Garfield on his trial, I have never seen it remarked that Guiteau's conduct was almost exactly like that of Fieschi.

The trial lasted twelve days, and very little was elicited about the conspiracy,--if indeed there was one. Suddenly Pepin, whose terror had been abject, rallied his courage, refused to implicate Morey or to make revelations, and kept his resolution to the last.

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