“The manner, bearing, and gestures of the Duke of Angouleme cannot be called gracious, especially in contrast with his father’s manners; doubtless it is not fair to ask that a prince, any more than another, should be favored by nature, but it is much to be desired that he shall have an air of superiority.  The ruling taste of the Dauphin was for the chase.  He also read much and gave much time to the personnel of the army.  Retiring early, he arose every morning at five o’clock, and lighted his own fire.  Far from having anything to complain of in him, I could only congratulate myself on his kindness.”

The Dauphiness, Marie-Theresa-Charlotte of France, Duchess of Angouleme, born at Versailles the 19th of December, 1778, was forty-five years old when her uncle and father-in-law, Charles X., ascended the throne.  She was surrounded by universal veneration.  She was regarded, and with reason, as a veritable saint, and by all parties was declared to be sans peur et sans reproche.

The Duchess of Angouleme, shunning the notoriety sought by other princesses, preferred her oratory to the salons.  Yet her devotion had nothing mean or narrow in it.  Despite the legendary catastrophes that weighed upon her, she always appeared at fetes where her presence was demanded.  She laughed with good heart at the theatre, and there was nothing morose or ascetic in her conversation.  She never spoke of her misfortunes.  One day she was pitying a young girl who suffered from chilblains.  “I know what it is,” she said; “I have had them.”  Then she added, without other comment:  “True, the winters were very severe at that time.”  She did not wish to say that she had had these chilblains while a prisoner in the Temple, when fuel was refused to her.

But if the Princess never spoke of herself, she never ceased to think of the martyrs for whom she wept.  At the Tuileries, she occupied the Pavillon de l’Horloge and the Pavillon de Flore, the first floor apartments that had been her mother’s.  She used for her own a little salon hung with white velvet sown with marguerite lilies.  This tapestry was the work of the unhappy Queen and of Madame Elisabeth.  In the same room was a stool on which Louis XVII. had languished and suffered.  It served as prie-dieu to the Orphan of the Temple.  There was in this stool a drawer where she had put away the remaining relics of her parents:  the black silk vest and white cravat worn by Louis XVI. the day of his death; a lace bonnet of Marie Antoinette, the last work done by the Queen in her prison of the Conciergerie, which Robespierre had had taken from her on the pretext that the widow of the Christian King might kill herself with her needle or with a lace-string; finally some fragments of the fichu which the wind raised from the shoulders of Madame Elisabeth when the angelic Princess was already on the scaffold.  The Dauphiness, who usually dined with the King, dined alone on the 21st of January and the 16th of October.  She shut herself in the chamber where she had collected these relics and passed the whole day and evening there in prayer.