terward known as Egalite, was
one of the most interesting figures among the old nobility. The
great-great-great-grandson of Louis XIII, he was a distant cousin of
Louis XVI, and ranked as the first noble of France beyond the royal
family. His education had been unfortunate. His father lived with a
ballet-dancer, while his mother, the Princess Henriette de
Bourbon-Conti, scandalized a society which was not easily shocked.
During the Terror the sans culottes everywhere averred that the Duke was
the son of a coachman in the service of the banker Duruet. Doubtless
this was false, but the princess had abundant liaisons not much more
reputable. Left to himself at sixteen years old, Egalite led a life of
extreme profligacy, but he married one of the most beautiful and
charming women of the age, whom he succeeded in inspiring with a devoted
affection. Born in 1747, his father died in 1785, leaving him, just at
the outbreak of the Revolution, the master of enormous wealth, and the
father of three sons who adored him. The eldest of these was the future
king, Louis-Philippe. The man must have had good in him to have been
loved as he was throughout life. He was besides more intelligent
touching the Revolution and its meaning than any man approaching him in
rank in France. The Duke, when a young man, served with credit in the
navy, but after the battle of Ushant, in 1778, where he commanded the
blue squadron, he was received with such enthusiasm in Paris, that
Marie-Antoinette obtained his dismissal from the service. From this
period he withdrew from court and his opposition to the government
began. He adopted republican ideas, which he drew from America, and he
educated his children as democrats. In 1789 he was elected to the
States-General, where he supported the fusion of the orders, and
attained to a popularity which, on one occasion, according to Madame de
Campan, nearly made the Queen faint from rage and grief. It was from the
garden of his palace of the Palais Royal that the column marched on July
14, wearing his colors, the red, white and blue, to storm the Bastille.
It seemed that he had only to go on resolutely to thrust the King aside
and become the ruler of France. He made no effort to do so. Mirabeau is
said to have been disgusted with his lack of ambition. He was charitable
also, and spent very large sums of money among the poor of Paris during
the years of distress which followed upon the social disorders. The
breach w