y, that if
the duke and his brothers would embark for America, leaving Europe,
the two imprisoned princes should be restored to liberty, and the
sequestrated property of the family should be refunded.

Louis XVIII., also an emigrant, in the bosom of the armies of
Austria, and surrounded by the armed nobility of France, had
previously, through an envoy, urged Louis Philippe to join the
emigrants, in their attempt, by the aid of the sword of foreigners,
to re-establish the throne of France. But the prince was not willing
to bear arms against his native land.

The agents of the Directory, who now approached the prince, presented
him a letter from his mother. Her husband had suffered a cruel death
from the executioner. Her two sons were in hourly peril of the same
fate. Her eldest son and her daughter were in exile, wandering in
poverty, she knew not where. She herself was a captive, cruelly
separated from all her family, exposed to many insults, and liable,
at any hour, to suffer upon the scaffold the same fate which her
queen, Maria Antoinette, and many others of the noblest ladies of
France had already endured.

The affectionate heart of this amiable woman was lacerated with
anguish. She wrote a letter to her son, which was intrusted to the
agents in search of him, imploring him, in the most affecting terms,
to rescue the family, by a voluntary exile to America, from its
dreadful woes and perils. In the letter she wrote:

"May the prospect of relieving the misfortunes of your
distressed mother, of mitigating the sorrows of your family,
and of contributing to restore peace to your unhappy
country, reward your generosity."

The duke, upon the reception of this letter, decided at once to
embark for America. To his mother he wrote: "When my beloved mother
shall have received this letter, her commands will have been
executed, and I shall have sailed for America. I shall embark in the
first vessel destined for the United States. I no longer think that
happiness is lost to me while I have it in my power to alleviate the
sorrows of a cherished mother, whose situation and sufferings have
for a long time rent my heart."[E]

[Footnote E: A. Laugier et Carpentier, p. 132.]

On the 24th of September, 1796, the Duke of Orleans embarked at
Hamburg in an American vessel, "The America," then a regular packet
plying between that port and Philadelphia. Still retaining his
incognito, he represented himself as a