Authors, French -- 19th century -- Biography; Autobiographies; Hugo, Victor, 1802-1885
M. Vatout is with the Royal Family. For the whole of them there are but
three servants, of whom one, and one only, accompanied them from the
Tuileries. In this state of destitution they demanded of Paris the
restitution of what belongs to them in France; their property is under
seizure, and has remained so notwithstanding their reclamations. For
different reasons. One of the motives put forward by the Provisional
Government is the debt of the civil list, which amounts to thirty
millions. Queer ideas about Louis Philippe were entertained. He may
have been covetous, but he certainly was not miserly; he was the most
prodigal, the most extravagant and least careful of men: he had
debts, accounts and arrears everywhere. He owed 700,000 francs to
a cabinet-maker; to his market gardener he owed 70,000 francs *for
butter*.
Consequently none of the seals placed on the property could be broken
and everything is held to secure the creditors--everything, even to
the personal property of the Prince and Princess de Joinville, rentes,
diamonds, etc., even to a sum of 198,000 francs which belongs in her own
right to the Duchess d’Orleans.
All that the Royal Family was able to obtain was their clothing and
personal effects, or rather what could be found of these. Three long
tables were placed in the theatre of the Tuileries, and on these were
laid out all that the revolutionists of February had turned over to
the governor of the Tuileries, M. Durand Saint-Amand. It formed a queer
medley--court costumes stained and torn, grand cordons of the Legion of
Honour that had been trailed through the mud, stars of foreign orders,
swords, diamond crowns, pearl necklaces, a collar of the Golden Fleece,
etc. Each legal representative of the princes, an aide-de-camp or
secretary, took what he recognised. It appears that on the whole little
was recovered. The Duke de Nemours merely asked for some linen and in
particular his heavy-soled shoes.
The Prince de Joinville, meeting the Duke de Montpensier, greeted him
thus: “Ah! here you are, Monsieur; you were not killed, you have not had
good luck!”
Gudin, the marine painter, who went to England, saw Louis Philippe. The
King is greatly depressed. He said to Gudin: “I don’t understand it.
What happened in Paris? What did the Parisians get into their heads? I
haven’t any idea. One of these days they will recognise that I did not
do one thing wrong.” He did not, indeed, do one thing wrong; he did all
things wrong!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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