IV.
THE ROYAL FAMILY OF FRANCE.
Not many months ago, a man[1] devoid of the fear of God, and standing in dread of pistol-shot and horsewhip, dared insult his Royal Highness the Duke d'Aumale's august family, the Royal House of France.[2] Taking up his pen. Prince Henry de Valori, aide-de-camp to General d'Azémar, reviewed the acts of the Second Imperial Administration, pointing to the following facts:—
We scarcely realize that after the Crimean War, undertaken to diminish the power of Russia, this Power in ten years has in the East reached the British frontiers, and is threatening the
- ↑ Prince Napoleon (Jerome).
- ↑ The language used by Prince Napoleon with regard to j^he Bourbon and Orleans families led to the publication soon afterwards of a pamphlet called, "Lettre sur l'Histoire de France, adressée au Prince Napoléon" by the Duke d'Aumale, which produced a great sensation in Paris, where it was not suppressed until it had obtained a large circulation. The brochure was damaging to the Napoleonic party, not less from the facts which it recalled, than from the singular ability with which they were applied. It was known to have caused the Emperor the greatest uneasiness. In a letter from a well-informed authority, among the Prince's papers, it is said that at a meeting of his Council, which had been called to consider what course should be taken in regard to it, the Emperor stopped the Ministers when they spoke of it as a tissue of falsehoods and exaggerations. "No, gentlemen," he said, with great firmness; "it is not so. Nobody knows the truth so well as I do, and there is but one calumny in the letter, and that is the accusation against me —that, while my mother was asking protection of Louis Philippe, I was conspiring against him with some of the chiefs of the Republican party. In fact, I was ill in bed with a bad sore throat. Louis Philippe's reception of my mother was that of a father receiving his child. He folded his arm round her, and promised to do all he could for her and hers; and when she returned to my bedside, her face was still wet with the tears which she had shed." The Emperor, through his secretary, M. Mocquard, published a few days afterwards an explicit denial of the Duke d'Aumale's accusations.— Taken from the "Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort," by Sir T. Martin, K.C.B.
