In all questions of adornment, toilet,
furniture, she set the fashion. A commission as "tradesman of Madame"
was the dream of all the merchants. Sometimes, on New Year's Day, her
purchases at the chief shops were announced in the Moniteur. There were
hardly any chroniques in the journals under the Restoration. A simple
"item" sufficed for an account of the most dazzling fetes. If the
customs of the newspapers had been under the reign of Charles X. what
they are now, the Duchess of Berry would have filled all the "society
notes," and the objective point of every "reporter," to use an American
expression, would have been the Pavillon de Marsan, the "Little
Chateau," as it was then called. There indeed shone in all their
splendor the stars of French and foreign nobility, the women who
possessed all sorts of aristocracy--of birth, of fortune, of wit, and
of beauty. This little circle of luxury and elegance excited less
jealousy and less criticism than did the intimate society of Marie
Antoinette in the last part of the old regime, because in the Queen's
time, to frequent the Petit Trianon was the road to honors, while under
Charles X. the intimates of the Pavillon de Marsan did not make their
social pleasures the stepping-stone to fortune.

The Duchess of Berry never meddled in politics. Doubtless her
sympathies, like those of the Dauphiness, were with the Right, but she
exercised no influence on the appointment of ministers and
functionaries. Charles X. never consulted her about public affairs; the
idea would never have occurred to the old King to ask counsel of so
young and inexperienced a woman.

It is but justice to the Princess to say that while wholly inclined
toward the Right, she had none of the exaggeration of the extremists in
either her ideas or her attitude, and that, repudiating the arrogance
and prejudices of the past, she never, in any way, dreamed of the
resurrection of the old regime. She was liked by the army, being known
as a good rider and a courageous Princess. When she talked with
officers she had the habit of saying things that went straight to their
hearts. There was no difference in her politeness to the men of the old
nobility or to the parvenus of victory. The former servitors of
Napoleon were grateful for her friendliness to them, and perhaps they
would always have respected the white flag--the flag of Henry IV., had
it been borne by the gracious hand of his worthy descendant. To sum up,
she wa