A little girl having been born, these witnesses were summoned to the chamber by Madame de Hautfort, the duchess’s lady-in-waiting.  The duchess answered their questions firmly, and on returning to the next room, her own physician declared on oath that the duchess was the lawful wife of Count Hector Luchesi-Palli, of the family of Campo Formio, of Naples, gentleman of the bedchamber to the king of the Two Sicilies, living at Palermo.

This was the first intimation given of the parentage of the child.  A mouth later, Marie Caroline and her infant embarked on board a French vessel, attended by Marshal Bugeaud, and were landed at Palermo.  Very few of the duchess’s most ardent admirers in former days were willing to accompany her.  Her baby died before it was many months old.  Charles X. refused to let her have any further care or charge of her son.  “As Madame Luchesi-Palli,” he said, “she had forfeited all claims to royal consideration.”

A reconciliation, however, official rather than real, was patched up by Chateaubriand between the duchess and Charles X.; but her political career was over.  She was allowed to see the Duc de Bordeaux for two or three days once a year.  The young prince was thenceforward under the maternal care of his aunt, the Duchesse d’Angouleme.  The Duchesse de Berri passed the remainder of her adventurous life in tranquillity.  Her marriage with Count Luchesi-Palli was apparently a happy one.  They had four children.  She owned a palace in Styria, and another on the Grand Canal at Venice, where she gave popular parties.  In 1847 she gave some private theatricals, at which were present twenty-seven persons belonging to royal or imperial families.  Her buoyancy of spirit kept her always gay.  One would have supposed that she would be overwhelmed by the fall we have related.  She was good-natured, charitable, and extravagant.  She died leaving heavy debts, which the Duc de Bordeaux paid for her.  Her daughter Louise, sister of the Duc de Bordeaux, married the Duke of Parma, who was assassinated in 1854.  Their daughter married Don Carlos, who claims at present to be rightful heir to the thrones of France and Spain.  She died in 1864, shortly after the Count Luchesi-Palli.  The Duchesse de Berri, who in her later years became very devout, d’apres la maniere Italienne, as somebody has said, wrote thus about his death:—­

“I have been so tried that my poor head reels.  The loss of my good and pious daughter made me almost crazy, but the care of my husband had somewhat calmed me, when God took him to himself.  He died like a saint in my arms, with his children around him, smiling at me and pointing to heaven.”

The duchess died suddenly at Brussels in 1870, aged seventy-one.  “And,” adds an intensely Legitimist writer from whom I have taken these details of her declining years, “had she lived till 1873, she would have given her son better advice than that he followed."[1]