Les Spélunges, a rocky promontory, full of holes and cracks, like a
petrified sponge, on which formerly shepherds pastured their goats,
has become the world-famed Monte Carlo; and La Condamine, once the
flower-garden that supplied the House of Rimmel with perfumes, is now
occupied by houses of those who live more or less directly on the
tables. Charles III., who made the concession, has not left a very
savoury recollection behind him. Whilst his father was reigning prince,
he tired of being only heir apparent, and stirred up a revolt against
his father; but the National Guard arrested him, and he was conducted
to Genoa, where he was set at liberty.
His son, Albert Honoré Charles, the present Prince, married Lady Mary
Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, on September
21st, 1869, and by her had a son, born in 1870.
But they apparently got tired of each other, for the Pope was
approached by Lady Mary, with the full consent of the Prince, to get
the marriage annulled.
Now the Church of Rome holds very strict views as to the indissoluble
nature of marriage. Even the successor of S. Peter protests his
inability to pronounce a divorce. _But_, he can annul a marriage on
various grounds; and to help this out, all sorts of bars to legitimate
marriage have been devised, as consanguinity within seven degrees of
relationship, affinity, spiritual relationship through sponsorship
at the font, or legal relationship through guardianship, beside many
others, by means of some of which, with a little greasing of palms,
hardly a legitimate union cannot be annulled. Accordingly, on January
3rd, 1880, after eleven years of married life, the Pope declared the
marriage to have been void, on the plea put forward by Lady Mary that
she had been over-persuaded to marry the Prince, by her mother. But
the Papal Court laid down that although the connexion had been one
of mere concubinage, yet, nevertheless, the son was to be regarded as
legitimate. “Which is the humour of it,” as Corporal Nym would say.
It further ordered that the re-marriage of either party must take
place where the State did not require civil marriage, as civil courts
considered the first marriage as valid. “Which,” again as Nym would
say, “is the humour of it.”
Eleven months after this decree Lady Mary Hamilton married Count
Tassilo Festitics, at Pesth; and the Prince married, October 30th,
1889, Alice, dowager duchess of Richelieu, a Heine of New Orleans. The
name is Jewish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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