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IX.

made him a gift of 1,500,000 francs (£60,000), but he CHAP. declared he would only accept to consecrate it to the departments which had suffered most during the dreadful 1820. scarcity of that year-a promise which he religiously performed. The marriage proved an auspicious one. The young princess won every heart by the elegance of her person and the engaging liveliness of her manner; and she gave proof that the direct line of succession was not likely to fail while her husband lived. The two first children of the marriage, the eldest of whom was a prince, died in early infancy; but the third, Princess Mary, who afterwards became Duchess of Parma, still survived, and the Mort. du princess had been three months enceinte when the hand Duc de of an assassin deprived her of her husband, and induced xvi. 282; a total change in the prospects and destinies of France. 239, 241; Never were severed married persons more tenderly at- 358; Biog. tached, or on whose mutual safety more important con- 83, 84, sequences to the world were dependent. 1

1 Chateaub.

Berri, Euv.

Lam. vi

Lac. ii. 356,

Univ. lviii.

33.

assassin.

There lived at Paris at that time a man of the name of Louvel, whose biography is only of interest as indicating Louvel, his by what steps, and the indulgence of what propensities, and what opinions, men are conducted to the most atrocious crimes. He had been born at Versailles, in 1787, of humble parents, who made their bread by selling smallwares to the retainers of the palace. He had received the first rudiments of education, if education it could be called, amidst the fêtes of the Convention, where regicides were celebrated as the first of patriots, and the operatic worship of the theo-philanthropists, where universal liberation from restraint was preached as the obvious dictate and intention of nature. Solitary in his disposition, taciturn in his habits, he revolved these ideas in his mind without revealing them to any one, and they fermented so in his bosom that when Louis XVIII. landed at Calais, in 1814, he endeavoured to get to the pier to assassinate him the instant he set foot on the soil of France. For several years after, he was so haunted

IX.

1820.

CHAP. by the desire to become a regicide, or at least signalise himself by the murder of a prince, that he was forced to move from place to place, to give a temporary distraction to his mind; and he went repeatedly to St Germain, St Cloud, and Fontainebleau to seek an opportunity of doing So. He was long disappointed, and had hovered about the opera for many nights, when the Duke de Berri was 244, 247; there, in hopes of finding the means of striking his victim, when, on the 13th February 1820, chance threw the long-wished-for opportunity in his way.1

1 Lam. vi.

Lac. ii. 356,

357.

34.

Duke de

Berri.

On that day, being the last of the carnival, the Duke Assassina de Berri was at the opera with the princess; and Louvel tion of the lurked about the door, armed with a small sharp poniard, with which he had previously provided himself. He was at the door when the prince entered the house, and might have struck him as he handed the princess out of the carriage; but a lingering feeling of conscience withheld his hand at that time. But the fatal moment ere long arrived. During the interval of two of the pieces, the Duke and Duchess left their own box to pay a visit to that of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, who, with their whole family, destined to such eventful changes in future times, were in a box in the neighbourhood. On returning to her own box, the door of another one was suddenly opened, and struck the side of the Duchess de Berri, who, being apprehensive of the effects of any shock in her then delicate situation, expressed a wish to the prince to leave the house and return home. The prince at once agreed, and handed the Duchess into her carriage. "Adieu !" cried she, smiling to her husband, "we shall soon meet again." They parted, but it was to be reunited in another world. As the prince was returning from the carriage to the house, Louvel, who was standing in the shade of a projecting part of the wall, so still that he had escaped the notice both of the sentinels on duty and the footmen of the Duke, rushed suddenly forward, and seizing with his left arm the left shoulder of the prince,

IX.

1820.

struck him violently with the right arm on the right side CHAP. with the poniard. So instantaneous was the act that the assassin escaped in the dark; and the Duke, who only felt, as is often the case, a violent blow, and not the stab, put his hand to the spot struck. He then felt the hilt of, the dagger, which was still sticking in his side; and being 233, 235; then made aware he had been stabbed, he exclaimed, "I 360; Biog. am assassinated; I am dead; I have the poniard: that 84, 85. man has killed me!"1

1 Lam. vi.

Lac. ii. 359,

Univ. lviii.

moments.

The princess was just driving from the door of the 35. opera-house when the frightful words reached her ear. His last She immediately gave a piercing shriek, heard above all the din of the street, and loudly called out to her servants to stop and let her out. They did so, and the moment the door was opened, before the steps were let down, she sprung out of the carriage and clasped her husband in her arms, who was covered with blood, and just drawing the dagger from his side. "I am dead!" said he;"send for a priest. Come, dearest !-let me die in your arms. Meanwhile the assassin, in the first moments of terror and agitation, had made his escape, and he had already reached the arcade which branches off from the Rue de Richelieu, under the spacious arches of the Bibliothèque du Roi, when a waiter in a coffeehouse, named Pauloise, hearing the alarm, seized, and was still writhing with him, when three gendarmes came up, and having apprehended, brought him back to the door of the opera-house. He was there nearly torn in pieces by the crowd, which was inflamed with the most violent indignation; but the gendarmes succeeded with great difficulty in extricating him, being fearful that the secrets of an extended conspiracy would perish with him. Meanwhile the prince had been carried into a little apartment behind his box, and the medical men were arriving in haste. On being informed of the arrest of the assassin, he exclaimed, "Alas! how cruel is it to die by the hand of a Frenchman!" For a few minutes a ray of hope was felt by the

IX.

1820.

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CHAP. medical attendants, and illuminated every visage in the apartment; but the dying man did not partake the illusion, and fearing to augment the sufferings of the princess by the blasting of vain expectations, he said, "No! I am not deceived the poniard has entered to the hilt, I can "Yes, assure you. Caroline, are you there?" claimed the princess, subduing her sobs," and will never quit you." His domestic surgeon, M. Bougon, was sucking the wound to restore the circulation, which was beginning to fail. "What are you doing?" exclaimed the prince: "for God-sake, stop: perhaps the poniard was poisoned."1

1 Lam. vi. 254, 257; Derniers Moments

du Duc de

Berri, 32,

42; Biog

Univ. lviii.

84.

36.

His last

moments.

The Bishop of Chartres, his father's confessor, at length arrived, and had a few minutes' private conversation with the dying man, from which he seemed to derive much consolation. He asked for his infant daughter, who was brought to him, still asleep. "Poor child!" exclaimed he, laying his hand on her head," may you be less unfortunate than the rest of your family." The chief surgeon, Dupuytren, resolved to try, as a last resource, to open and enlarge the wound, to allow the blood, which had begun to impede respiration, to flow externally. He bore the operation with firmness-his hand, already clammy with the sweat of death, still clasping that of the Duchess. After it was over, he said, "Spare me any further pain, since I must die." Then caressing the head of his beloved wife, whose beautiful locks had so often awakened his admiration, "Caroline," said he, "take care of yourself, for the sake of our infant which you bear in your bosom." The Duke and Duchess of Orleans had been in the apartment from the time the prince was brought in, and the king, the Duke d'Angoulême, and the rest of the royal family, arrived while he was still alive. "Who is the Biog. Univ. man who has killed me?" said he: "I should wish to see lviii. 85; Derniers him, in order to inquire into his motives: perhaps it is du Duc de some one whom I have unconsciously offended." The Count d'Artois assured him that the assassin had no personal animosity against him.2 "Would that I may live long

* Lam. vi.

259, 261;

Moments

Berri, 45,

51.

IX.

enough to ask his pardon from the king," said the worthy CHAP. descendant of Saint Louis. "Promise me, my fatherpromise me, my brother, to ask of the king the life of that man."

1820.

37.

But the supreme hour soon approached: all the resources of art could not long avert the stroke of fate. His death. The opening of the wound had only for a brief period relieved the accumulation of blood within the breast, and symptoms of suffocation approached. Then, on a few words interchanged between him and the Duchess, two illegitimate children which he had had in London, of a faithful companion in misfortune, and whom both had brought up at Paris with the utmost kindness, were brought into the room. As they knelt at his side, striving to stifle their sobs in his bloody garments, he said, embracing them with tenderness, "I know you sufficiently, Caroline, to be assured you will take care, after me, of these orphans." With the instinct of a noble mind, she took her own infant from Madame de Gontaut, who held it in her arms, and, taking the children of the stranger by the hand, said to them, "Kiss your sister." The prince confessed soon after to the Bishop of Chartres, and received absolution. "My God," said he, at several responses, " pardon me, and pardon him who has taken my life." It was announced that several of the marshals had arrived, eager to testify their interest and affliction. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I had hoped to have shed my blood more usefully in the midst of them for France." But still the pardon of his murderer chiefly engrossed his thoughts. When the trampling of the horses on the pavement announced the approach of the king, he testified the utmost joy; and when the monarch entered the apartment, his first words were, "My uncle, give me your hand, that I may kiss it for the last time;" and then added with earnestness, still holding the hand, "I entreat of you, in the name of my death, the life of that man." "You are not so ill as you suppose," answered Louis ;

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