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 chateau 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 (or Roland), and that he had been buried
within its walls after he fell at Roncesvalles.

In this citadel the Duchesse de Berri was confined, with every
precaution against escape or rescue; and the restraint and monotony
of such a life soon told upon a woman of her character. She could
play the heroine, acting well her part, with an admiring world
for her audience; but "cabined, cribbed, confined" in an old,
dilapidated castle, her courage and her health gave way. She was
cheered, however, at first by Legitimist testimonies of devotion.
Chateaubriand wrote her a memorable letter, imploring her, in the
name of M. de Malesherbes, his ancestor who had defended Louis XVI.,
to let him undertake her defence, if she were brought to trial; but
the reigning family of France had no wish to proceed to such an
extremity. The duchess had not come of a stock in which all the
women were _sans reproche_, like Marie Amelie. Her grandmother, Queen
Caroline of Naples, the friend of Lady Hamilton and of Lord Nelson,
had been notoriously a bad woman; her sister, Queen Christina of
Spain, had made herself equally famous; and doubts had already been
thrown on the legitimacy of the son of the duchess, the posthumous
child of the Duc de Berri. The queen of France, who was almost a
saint, had been fond of her young relative for her many engaging
qualities; and what to do with her, in justice to France, was a
difficult problem.

To the consternation and disgust of the Legitimists, the heroine
of La Vendee dropped from her pedestal and sank into the mire.
"She lost everything," says Louis Blanc,--"even the sympathy of
the most ultra-pa