rovence, as king, with the title of Louis XVIII. The Count de
Provence, assuming all the etiquette of royalty, and recognized by
nearly all the courts of Europe as the lawful sovereign of France,
held his court at Mittau, in Courland, surrounded by a crowd of
emigrant courtiers. His only brother, Count d'Artois, who
subsequently ascended the throne of France as Charles X., resided in
London, punctiliously maintaining court etiquette.

[Footnote G: There have been efforts to prove that the dauphin was
removed from prison, and another child was substituted in his place,
who died and was buried. Several claimants have risen, professing to
be the dauphin. But there is no evidence upon this point sufficient
to change the general verdict of history.]

[Illustration: LOUIS XVII. IN PRISON.]

The Count d'Artois, anxious to secure the open and cordial
co-operation of the Duke of Orleans in behalf of the Royalist
cause, sent him an earnest invitation to come to London, assuring him
of an affectionate greeting on his own part and that of his friends.
The duke repaired to London, and was received on the 13th of February
with princely hospitality by the count and other members of the
Bourbon family, at his residence in Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square.

"The king, Louis XVIII.," said the Count d'Artois, "will be delighted
to see you; but it will be proper and necessary that you should first
write to him." The Duke of Orleans did so. In this letter he must
have recognized the sovereignty of Louis XVIII., a sovereignty
founded on legitimacy, for he received a courteous and cordial reply.
Thus there seemed to be a perfect reconciliation, social and
political, between the elder and younger branches of the Bourbon
family.

General Dumouriez had visited the court of the exiled monarch,
pledged to him his homage, mounted the white cockade, and, receiving
a commission in the Russian army, was marching with the Allies
against republican France. All his energies were consecrated to the
restoration of the house of Bourbon-Orleans.

Count d'Artois left no means untried to induce the Duke of Orleans
and his brothers to enlist under the standard of emigration. But an
instinctive reluctance to unite with foreigners in their war against
France, and the entreaties of their anxious mother that they should
not, in those dark and perilous hours, commit themselves to the
apparently hopeless cause of the royal confederacy, led the cautious
duke t