The Duchess of Berry thought that a palace should be neither a barracks nor a convent nor a prison, and that even for a princess there is no happiness without liberty.  She loved to go out without an escort, to take walks, to visit the shops, to go to the little theatres, to make country parties.  She was like a bird in a gilded cage, which often escapes and returns with pleasure only because it has escaped.  She was neither worn out nor blasee; everything interested her, everything made her gay; she saw only the good side of things.  In her all was young—­mind, character, imagination, heart.  Thus she knew none of those vague disquietudes, that causeless melancholy, that unreasoned sadness, from which suffer so many queens and so many princesses on the steps of a throne.

Gracious and simple in her manners, modest in her bearing, more inclined to laughter and smiles than to sobs and tears, satisfied with her lot despite her widowhood, she felt happy in being a princess, in being a mother, in being in France.  Flattered by the homage addressed to her on all sides, but without haughty pride in it, she protected art and letters with out pedantry, rejuvenated the court, embellished the city, spread animation wherever she was seen, and appeared to the people like a seductive enchantress.  Those who were at her receptions found themselves not in the presence of a coldly and solemnly majestic princess, but of an accomplished mistress of the house bent on making her salon agreeable to her guests.  There was in her nothing to abash, and by her gracious aspect, her extreme affability, she knew how to put those with whom she talked at their ease, while wholly preserving her own rank.  She was not only polite, she was engaging, always seeking to say something flattering or kindly to those who had the honor to approach her.  If she visited a studio, she congratulated the artist; in a shop she made many purchases and talked with the merchants with a grace more charming to them, perhaps, than even her extreme liberality.  If she went to a theatre, she enjoyed herself like a child.  The select little fetes given by her always had a character of special originality and gaiety.

The Dauphiness had a higher rank at court than Madame, because she was married to the heir of the throne.  But as she took much less interest in social matters, she did not shine with so much eclat.  The Duchess of Berry was the queen of elegance.  In all questions of adornment, toilet, furniture, she set the fashion.  A commission as “tradesman of Madame” was the dream of all the merchants.  Sometimes, on New Year’s Day, her purchases at the chief shops were announced in the Moniteur.  There were hardly any chroniques in the journals under the Restoration.  A simple “item” sufficed for an account of the most dazzling fetes.  If the customs of the newspapers had been under the reign of Charles X. what they are now, the Duchess of Berry would have filled all the “society notes,” and the