e easy existence of a country-gentleman of princely rank--the
Comte de Chambord. Son of that Duchesse de Berri who tried to play a
great part and failed, he was married to an Italian princess and had
no children. He was, therefore, the last of the Bourbons, and passed in
Europe as such. But he did not care. Perhaps his was the philosophy of
the indolent which saith that some one must be last and why not I?

Nevertheless, there ran in his veins some energetic blood. On his
father's side he was descended from sixty-six kings of France. From his
mother he inherited a relationship to many makers of history. For the
Duchesse de Berri's grandmother was the sister of Marie Antoinette. Her
mother was aunt to that Empress of the French, Marie Louise, who was a
notable exception to the rule that "Bon sang ne peut mentir." Her father
was a king of Sicily and Naples. She was a Bourbon married to a Bourbon.
When she was nineteen she gave birth to a daughter, who died next day.
In a year she had a son who died in twenty hours. Two years later her
husband died in her arms, assassinated, in a back room of the Opera
House in Paris.

Seven months after her husband's death she gave birth to the Comte de
Chambord, the last of the old Bourbons. She was active, energetic and
of boundless courage. She made a famous journey through La Vendee on
horseback to rally the Royalists. She urged her father-in-law, Charles
X., to resist the revolution. She was the best Royalist of them all. And
her son was the Comte de Chambord, who could have been a king if he had
not been a philosopher, or a coward.

He was waiting till France called him with one voice. As if France had
ever called for anything with one voice!

Amid the babel there rang out not a few voices for the younger branch
of the Royal line--the Orleans. Louis Philippe--king for eighteen
years--was still alive, living in exile at Claremont. Two years earlier,
in the rush of the revolution of 1848, he had effected his escape to
Newhaven. The Orleans always seek a refuge in England, and always turn
and abuse that country when they can go elsewhere in safety. And England
is not one penny the worse for their abuse, and no man or country was
ever yet one penny the better for their friendship.

Louis Philippe had been called to the throne by the people of France.
His reign of eighteen years was marked by one great deed. He threw open
the Palace of Versailles--which was not his--to the public. An