Amélie, niece to Marie Antoinette, and aunt to the future Duchesse
de Berri.

No breath of scandal ever disturbed the matrimonal happiness of
Louis Philippe and Marie Amélie. They had a noble family of five
sons and three daughters, all distinguished by their ability and
virtues. I shall have to tell hereafter how devotion to the interests
of his family was one cause of Louis Philippe's overthrow.

In 1814, when Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau; Louis Philippe
left Palermo, attended only by one servant, and made his way to
Paris and the home of his family, the Palais Royal. He hurried
into the house, and in spite of the opposition of the concierge,
who took him for a madman, he rushed to the staircase; but before
he ascended it he fell upon his knees, and bursting into tears,
kissed the first step before him.

This was probably the most French-like thing in Louis Philippe's
career. He was far more like an Englishman than a Frenchman. Had
he been an English prince, his faults would have seemed to his
people like virtues.

Of course the son of Égalité could be no favorite with the elder
Bourbons; but he soon became the hope of the middle classes, and
was very intimate with Laffitte the banker, and with Lafayette,
who, as we have seen, were both implicated in conspiracies seven
years before the Revolution of 1830. He was for many years not
rich, but he and the ladies of his house were very charitable.
Madame Adélaïde, speaking one day to a friend[1] of the reports
that were circulated concerning her brother's parsimony, said,--