grandfather and uncle, Charles X. and the Duc d'Angoulême, the
duchess his mother was to have been regent during his minority.
She regretted her inaction during the days of July, when, had she
taken her son by the hand and presented him herself to the people,
renouncing in his name and her own all ultra-Bourbon traditions
and ideas, she might have saved the dynasty.

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc and papers in "Figaro."]

[Illustration: MARIE CAROLINE FERDINANDE LOUISE, DUCHESSE DE BERRY.
Née à Naples, le 5 Novembre 1798.]

Under the influence of this regret, and fired by the idea of becoming
another Jeanne d'Albret, she urged her plans on Charles X., who
decidedly disapproved of them; but "the idea of crossing the seas
at the head of faithful paladins, of landing after the perils and
adventures of an unpremeditated voyage in a country of knights-errant,
of eluding by a thousand disguises the vigilance of enemies through
whom she had to pass, of wandering, a devoted mother and a banished
queen, from hamlet to hamlet and from château to château, appealing
to human nature high and low on its romantic side, and at the end of
a victorious conspiracy unfurling in France the ancient standard of
the monarchy, was too dazzling not to attract a young, high-spirited
woman, bold through her very ignorance, heroic through mere levity,
able to endure anything but depression and _ennui_, and prepared to
overbear all opposition with plausible platitudes about a mother's
love."[1]

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc, Histoire de Dix Ans.]