The claims of three pretended Dauphins—­Hervagault, the son of the tailor of St. Lo; Bruneau, son of the shoemaker of Vergin; and Naundorf or Norndorff, the watchmaker somewhat troubled her peace, but never for a moment obtained her sanction.  Of the many other pseudo-Dauphins (said to number a dozen and a half) not even the names remain.  In February,1820, a fresh tragedy befell the royal family in the assassination of the Duc de Berri, brother-in-law of the Duchesse d’Angouleme, as he was seeing his wife into her carriage at the door of the Opera-house.  He was carried into the theatre, and there the dying Prince and his wife were joined by the Duchess, who remained till he breathed his last, and was present when he, too, was laid in the Abbey of St. Denis.  She was present also when his son, the Duc de Bordeaux, was born, and hoped that she saw in him a guarantee for the stability of royalty in France.  In September, 1824, she stood by the death-bed of Louis XVIII., and thenceforward her chief occupation was directing the education of the little Duc de Bordeaux, who generally resided with her at Villeneuve l’Etang, her country house near St. Cloud.  Thence she went in July, 1830, to the Baths of Vichy, stopping at Dijon on her way to Paris, and visiting the theatre on the evening of the 27th.  She was received with “a roar of execrations and seditious cries,” and knew only too well what they signified.  She instantly left the theatre and proceeded to Tonnere, where she received news of the rising in Paris, and, quitting the town by night, was driven to Joigny with three attendants.  Soon after leaving that place it was thought more prudent that the party should separate and proceed on foot, and the Duchess and M. de Foucigny, disguised as peasants, entered Versailles arm-in-arm, to obtain tidings of the King.  The Duchess found him at Rambouillet with her husband, the Dauphin, and the King met her with a request for “pardon,” being fully conscious, too late, that his unwise decrees and his headlong flight had destroyed the last hopes of his family.  The act of abdication followed, by which the prospect of royalty passed from the Dauphin and his wife, as well as from Charles X.—­Henri V. being proclaimed King, and the Duc d’Orleans (who refused to take the boy monarch under his personal protection) lieutenant-general of the kingdom.

Then began the Duchess’s third expatriation.  At Cherbourg the royal family, accompanied by the little King without a kingdom, embarked in the ‘Great Britain’, which stood out to sea.  The Duchess, remaining on deck for a last look at the coast of France, noticed a brig which kept, she thought, suspiciously near them.

“Who commands that vessel?” she inquired.

“Captain Thibault.”

And what are his orders?”

“To fire into and sink the vessels in which we sail, should any attempt be made to return to France.”