The antagonistic parties.--Driven from Cuba.--Take refuge in England.--Courted by the Bourbons.--Reconciliation.--Embarrassments of the princes.--Aristocratic attentions.--Fashionable life in London.--Domestic habits.--Death of the Duke of Montpensier.--Sickness of Count Beaujolais.--Death of Count Beaujolais.--The Princess Amelia.--Banner of the Empire.--The Duke of Orleans in the Sicilian Court.--Spanish intrigues.--Wandering of the Duchess of Orleans.--The brother and sister united.--Their arrival at Malta.--Anarchy in Spain.--Unfriendly conduct of the Queen of Sicily.--Eulogy upon the Duchess of Orleans.--The wedding.--Character of the bride.--Her benevolence. The position of the French princes was peculiarly embarrassing. Both of the parties into which all the nations of Europe were then divided suspected and feared them. The Royalists could not forget that the father of the princes had taken the title of Egalite, had renounced all feudal privileges, had voted for the death of the king, and had placed himself at the head of the democratic movement in France. The liberal or democratic party could not forget that the young princes were by birth in the highest ranks of the nobility, that by blood relationship they were nearly connected with the crown, that their whole family had been so utterly crushed by democratic rule that they could not but hate that rule, and that there was a party in France, sustained by many of the courts in Europe, in favor of reaction and of re-establishing the throne with the young Duke of Orleans as king. Thus the Orleans princes were alike suspected and feared by both parties. The government in Madrid was in entire sympathy with the aristocratic party in Europe. Though the Orleans princes had been received in Cuba, by the Spanish authorities and leading citizens, with much attention, as the victims of democratic fury, the government of Madrid, remembering only the democracy of Egalite, and fearing that the princes, retaining their father's principles, might unfurl the dreaded tri-color in Havana, sent an order dated May 21, 1799, ordering the captain-general of the island not to permit any longer the presence of the dukes of Orleans and of Montpensier, and of their brother, Count Beaujolais, but to send them immediately to New Orleans, without any regard to their mode of subsistence. Under these circumstances the exiles, withdrawing from Cuba, succeeded in reaching the Bahama Islands, which belonged to England, and thence sailed for Halifax. The Duke of Kent, son of George III., and father of Queen Victoria, was then in Halifax, and received them with guarded and formal courtesy. Not certain what might be the feelings of the British Cabinet in reference to them, he did not feel authorized to grant them a passage to England on board a British vessel of war. They, therefore, embarked in a small vessel for New York, and there took passage in a regular packet-ship for England.