The Comte de Paris deeply felt the outrage.  He gave the world to understand that he had never conspired against the French Republic while living on his estates in France, but felt free to do so after this aggression.

The Duc d’Aumale avenged himself by an act of truly royal magnificence.  He published part of his will, bequeathing to the French Institute, of which he was a member, that splendid estate and palace of Chantilly which he had inherited from his godfather, the old Duke of Bourbon.  With its collections, its library, its archives, and its pictures, the gift is valued at from thirty-five to forty millions of francs.  The revenue of the estate is to be spent in enriching the collections, in encouraging scientific research, in pensioning aged authors, artists, and scientific discoverers.

“It is the grandest gift,” says M. Gabriel Monod, “ever given to a country.  It is worthy of a prince who joins to the attractive grace of noble breeding and the finest qualities of a soldier, the talents of a man of letters, the learning of a scholar, and the taste of an artist.”

M. Grevy—­le vieux, “the old fellow,” as his Parisians irreverently called him—­was deeply attached to his daughter, whose husband, M. Daniel Wilson, a presumptuous, speculative person, had made himself obnoxious to society and to all the political parties.  This man lived at the Elysee with his family, and made free use of presidential privileges.  It is said that by using the president’s right of franking letters for his business affairs, he saved himself in postage forty-thousand francs per annum.  He also made use of information that he obtained as son-in-law of the president to further his own interests, and once or twice he got M. Grevy into trouble by the unwarrantable publication of certain matters in a newspaper of which he was the proprietor.  Besides this he was at the head of a great number of financial schemes, whose business he conducted under the roof of the Elysee.  Before he married Mademoiselle Grevy, a conseil de famille had deprived him of any control over his property till he came of age, on account of his recklessness; but he was what in America we call “a smart man,” and M. Grevy was very much attached to him.

In the early days of 1887 a person who considered himself defrauded in a nefarious bargain he was trying to make with an adventuress, denounced to the police of Paris a Madame Limouzin, to whom he had paid money on her promise to secure for him the decoration of the Legion of Honor.  He wanted it to promote the sale of some kind of patent article in which he was interested.  To the astonishment of the police, when they raided the residence of Madame Limouzin, letters were found compromising two generals,—­General Caffarel, who had been high in the War Department when General Boulanger was minister, and General d’Andlau, author of a book, much commended by military authorities, on the siege of Metz.