nized no one but the unhappy Marshal Gerard, the extent of
whose misfortune I then understood.[1] After a few minutes they
said that all was ready. The body had been placed on a stretcher
covered with a white cloth. It was borne by four men of the house,
attended by two gendarmes. They went out through the stable-yard;
there was an immense crowd outside.... We all followed on foot
the inanimate body of this dear son, who a few hours before had
passed over the same road full of life, strength, and happiness....
Thus we carried him, and laid him down in our dear little chapel,
where four days before he had heard mass with the whole family."

[Footnote 1: Marshal Gerard was then mourning for his son.]

The death of the Duke of Orleans was the severest blow that could
have fallen on Louis Philippe, not only as a father, but as head
of a dynasty. The duke left two infant sons,--the Comte de Paris
and the Duc de Chartres. The former is now both the Orleanist and
Legitimist pretender, to the French throne.

In the early part of 1845 Louis Philippe, who had already visited
Windsor and been cordially received there, was visited in return at
his Chateau d'Eu by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, accompanied
by Lord Aberdeen, then English Minister for Foreign Affairs. The
king's reception of the young queen was most paternal. He kissed
her like a father, and did everything in his power to make her
visit pleasant. Among the subjects discussed during the visit was
the question of "the Spanish marriages."

The unfortunate Queen of Spain, Isabella II., was just sixteen years
old; her sister, the Infanta Luisa, was a year younger. Isabella
was the daughter of a vicious race, and with such a mother as she
had in Queen Christina, she had grown up to early womanhood utterly
ignorant and untrained. One of her ministers said of her that "no
one could be astonished that she had vices, but the wonder was
that she had by nature so many good qualities." Jolly, kindly,
generous, a rebel against etiquette, and an habitual breaker of
promises, she was long popular in Spain, in spite of a career of
dissoluteness only equalled by that of Catherine of Russia.

In 1846, however, she had not shown this tendency, and in the hands
of a good husband might have made as good a wife and as respectable
a woman as her sister Luisa has since proved.

There were many candidates for the honor of Queen Isabella's hand.
Louis Philippe sent his sons D'Aumale a