ourbons must have been considered irretrievably
lost. Indeed, their only hope consisted in the imprudence and folly of
him who had usurped their throne, and that hope they cherished. I will
here relate what I had the opportunity of learning respecting the conduct
of Louis XVIII. after his departure from France; this will naturally
bring me to the end of November 1807, at which time I read in the Abeille
du Nord published on the 9th of the same month, that the Comte de Lille
and the Due d'Angouleme had set off for England.

The Comte de Provence, as Louis' title then went, left Paris on the 21st
of June 1791. He constantly expressed his wish of keeping as near as
possible to the frontiers of France. He at first took up his abode at
Coblentz, and I knew from good authority that all the emigrants did not
regard him with a favourable eye. They could not pardon the wise.
principles he had professed at a period when there was yet time to
prevent, by reasonable concession, the misfortunes which imprudent
irritation brought upon France. When the emigrants, after the campaign
of 1792, passed the Rhine, the Comte de Provence resided in the little
town of Ham on the Lippe, where he remained until he was persuaded that
the people of Toulon had called him to Provence. As he could not, of
course, pass through France, Monsieur repaired to the Court of his
father-in-law, the King of Sardinia, hoping to embark at Genoa, and from
thence to reach the coast of Provence. But the evacuation of Toulon,
where the name of Bonaparte was for the first time sounded by the breath
of fame, having taken place before he was able to leave Turin, Monsieur
remained there four months, at the expiration of which time his
father-in-law intimated to him the impossibility of his remaining longer
in the Sardinian States. He was afterwards permitted to reside at
Verona, where he heard of Louis XVI.'s death. After remaining two years
in that city the Senate of Venice forbade his presence in the Venetian
States. Thus forced to quit Italy the Comte repaired to the army of
Conde.

The cold and timid policy of the Austrian Cabinet afforded no asylum to
the Comte de Provence, and he was obliged to pass through Germany; yet,
as Louis XVIII. repeated over and over again, ever since the Restoration,
"He never intended to shed French blood in Germany for the sake of
serving foreign interests." Monsieur had, indeed, too much penetration
not to see that his cause was a me