he could no longer walk; on this account the session was held in the Louvre; and the manner in which he suddenly pushed out on his low rolling chair, from beneath a curtain, which was quickly drawn back, as it is done on the stage, and as rapidly closed again, had an effect at once painful and ludicrous. Both these feelings were increased by the shrill piping treble which came squeaking forth from this unlucky corpulent body.... His brother, the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles the Tenth, was tall and thin, and had retained to his advanced age that habit of shuffling about with his legs, which teachers and governors had vainly tried to cure him of while young. He could not keep his body still for a single instant. His protruded head, his mouth always open, would of themselves have seemed to indicate mere stupidity rather than cunning, had not this impression been contradicted, partly by the vivacity of his eyes, and partly by his too notorious habit of intriguing. This idiotic air of poking forward the head, with the mouth always open--but aggravated by quite lifeless and almost totally closed eyes--was apparent in a still higher degree in his eldest son, the Duke of Angoulême. In the face of his wife there were still visible some traces, if not of a former beauty, at least of something characteristic and noble. In spite of her withered, lean figure, her gait was firm and majestic; but the terrorists of the Revolution had heaped misery of every kind in double and three-fold measure on this unhappy daughter of Louis the Sixteenth, and their cannibal severity had broken her heart for ever.... The Duchess of Berri, a Neapolitan princess, wife of the youngest son of the Count d'Artois, was young, but had been ill-treated by nature in her outward appearance. She was short, thin, with hair blonde almost to whiteness, and a kind of reddish fairness of complexion. In her irregular features, in her eyes which all but squinted, no kind of expression could be detected--not even that of frivolity, which she was accused of.... To both these ladies the rigorously-prescribed court-dress, as worn in open day, without candlelight, was very unbecoming. It consisted of a short white satin dress, called _jupe_, which means a dress without a train; the front breadth richly embroidered with gold, with a cut-out body, and short sleeves, leaving the neck and arms bare,--the effect of which was absolutely pitiable on the superannuated, yellow, and withered Duchess of Angoulême. Around the waist a golden ceinture held up a colored velvet skirt, with an enormous train, but no body. In front, this kind of outer dress, called _manteau de cour_, was open, and trimmed all round with broad lace. The head was decorated,