France in the Nineteenth Century by Elizabeth Latimer
page 61 of 550 (11%)
page 61 of 550 (11%)
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dismissed ignominiously from Naples by the English ambassador,
and she went to end her days with her nephew at Vienna. Marie Amélie used sometimes to tell her children how she had wept when a child for the death of the little dauphin, the eldest son of Louis XVI., who, before the Revolution broke out, was taken away from the evil to come. She was to have been married to him had he lived. When older, she had an early love-affair with her cousin, Prince Antoine of Austria; but he was destined for the Church, and the youthful courtship came to an untimely end. When she first met her future husband, she and her family were living in a sort of provisional exile in Palermo. The princess was twenty-seven, Louis Philippe was ten or twelve years older, and they seem to have been quite determined to marry each other very soon after their acquaintance began. It was not easy to do so, however, for the duke, as we have seen, was at that period too much a republican to suit even an English Admiral; but the princess declared that she would go into a convent if the marriage was forbidden, and on Dec. 25, 1809, she became the wife of Louis Philippe. No description could do justice to the purity and charity of this admirable woman; and in her good works she was seconded by her sister-in-law, Madame Adélaïde, and by her daughter. "The queen," her almoner tells us, "had 500,000 francs a year for her personal expenses, and gave away 400,000 of them." "M. Appert," she would say to him, "give those 500 francs we spoke of, but put them down upon next month's account. The waters run low this month; my purse is empty." An American lady, visiting the establishment of a great dressmaker in Paris, observed an old black silk dress |
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