Title:  Memoirs

Author:  Prince De Joinville

Release Date:  May, 2004 [EBook #5716] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 14, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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Memoirs
(Vieux souvenirs)
of the
prince de Joinville

Translated from the French
by
lady Mary Loyd

CHAPTER I

1818-1830

I was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, on the 14th of August, 1818.  Immediately after my birth, and as soon as the Chancellor of France, M. Dambray, had declared me to be a boy, I was made over to the care of a wet nurse and another attendant.  Three years later I passed out of female hands, earlier, somewhat, than is generally the case, for a little accident befell my nurse, in which my eldest brother’s tutor, an unfrocked priest, as he was then discovered to be, was also concerned.  My earliest memory, and a very hazy one it is, mixed up with some story or other about a parrot, is of having seen my grandmother, the Duchesse d’Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry.  After that I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon with my great-aunt, the Duchesse de Bourbon, a tiny little woman; and being taken to see the Princesse Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember seeing Talma act in Charles the Bold, and the great impression his gilt cuirass made upon me.

But the first event that really is exceedingly clear in my recollection is a family dinner given by Louis XVIII. at the Tuileries on Twelfth Night, 1824.  Even now, sixty-six years after, I can see every detail of that party, as if it had been yesterday.  Our arrival in the courtyard of the Tuileries, under the salute of the Swiss Guard at the Pavillon Marsan and the King’s Guard at the Pavillon de Flore.  Our getting out of the carriage under the porch of the stone staircase to the deafening rattle of the drums of the Cent Suisses.  Then my huge astonishment when we had to stand aside halfway up the stairs, to let “La viande du Roi,” in other words, his Majesty’s dinner, pass by, as it was being carried up from the kitchen to the first floor, escorted by his bodyguard.