Melun, November 22, 1830 [3]

We left Sens at half past eight and did not stop to dine, but ate in the carriage.  We passed through Fossard, Monteran, and got here about four.  The doctor is quite grave about his tricolor and has worn it all day.  We have had immense laughing at him.  He was very much frightened at Sens, because Papa told him the people of the hotel were for the Bourbons and were angry with him for wearing the tricolor.  A great many post-boys have it on their hats and all the fleurs-de-lis on the mile-posts are rubbed out.

[3] All extracts not otherwise specified are from Lady John Russell’s diary.

By this date Charles X, surrounded by his gloomy, ceremonial little court of faithful followers, was playing his nightly game of whist in the melancholy shelter of Holyrood, where he was to remain for the next two years, an insipid, sorrowful figure, distinguished by such dignity as unquerulous passivity can lend to the foolish and unfortunate.  Meanwhile, Paris was attempting to vamp up some interest in her new King, who walked the streets with an umbrella under his arm.

    Paris, December 23, 1830

We were in the Place Vendome to-day, which was full of national guards waiting for the King.  We stopped to see him.  It looked very gay and pretty:  the National Guard held hands in a long row and danced for ever so long round and round the pillar, with the people shouting as hard as they could.  It looked very funny, but the King did not come whilst we were there.  We heard them singing the Parisienne.  The trial is over and the ministers are at Vincennes, going to be put in prison.  There have been several mobs about the Luxembourg and the Palais Royal, but they think nothing more will happen now.

Who can hum now the tune of the “Parisienne”?  It has not stayed in men’s memories like the “Marseillaise”; no doubt it expressed the prosaic, middle-class spirit of the National Guard, which kept a King upon the throne, in his own way just as determined as his predecessors to rule in the interests of his family.

    Paris, February 5, 1831

Mama, Papa, Mary, Lizzy, [4] Charlie, Doddy [5] and I have been to a children’s ball at the Palais Royal.  It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and we danced all night long, but no big people at all danced.  We saw famously all the royal people; and Lizzy danced with two of the little princes.  The Duke of Orleans and M. Duc de Nemours were in uniform and so were all the other gentlemen.  The King and Queen are nice-looking old bodies. [6] It was capital fun and very merry indeed, the supper was beautiful.  There was famous galloping.

[4] Her sisters Mary and Elizabeth, afterwards Lady Mary Abercromby and Lady Elizabeth Romilly.

[5] Her brothers Charles and George.

[6] The next time she was to see the “old bodies” was on her own lawn at Pembroke Lodge, where she heard from the King the unimpressive story of “ma chute.”