All the local authorities flocked around to pay their respects on the occasion of that first visit, and amongst others the prefect of the department, M. Romieu, who had made himself some celebrity in his youth by reason of a variety of carnival pranks performed in the company of a well-known band of boon companions.  I recollect them perfectly well.  Among them was Lord Henry Seymour, who paraded the boulevards, surrounded by ladies in the most elegant costumes, in a carriage and four, with powdered and beribboned postilions, stopping at the public squares to harangue the crowd in flowery language, to delighted shouts of Vive milord l’Arsouille! (Long live the blackguard lord!).  And then there was another Englishman, Lord Clanricarde, the most inimitable of Pierrots, in a black skull-cap, with his melancholy face whitened, playing a series of nocturnal jokes, with the roof of a fiacre for his platform.  Count d’Alton, too, M. de Chateauvillard, and others, were the authors of all kinds of witty fooling.  Romieu’s best-known exploit was his having laid a friend, who had been indulging too freely, one fine night, in the middle of the street, with a lighted lantern laid on his chest to save him from being run over.

But our prefect was not fond of that particular story, for I remember a very indirect allusion to it which I was unlucky enough to make in familiar conversation, during a shooting-party, at which he appeared in a blue blouse and leather cap, was strongly resented by him.  Drawing himself up, he thus apostrophised me: 

“I beg your Royal Highness will give me credit for being a very serious prefect.”

I took the hint, and only talked to him about the damage done by cockchafers, and the difficulty of getting hard enough stone for the macadam roads, thenceforward.  The poor gentleman, after having played a certain part in the reaction after the Revolution of 1848, by the publication of a sensational pamphlet entitled Le Spectre Rouge, died of grief at the death of a son who was killed at Sevastopol.

I was obliged to make a cure at Vichy during the summer, the successive fevers I had suffered from in hot climates having affected my liver.  For this purpose I went to the Chateau de Randan, where I endured cruel anguish of mind, for my daughter fell dangerously ill.  She made a happy recovery, thanks to the care of a young military doctor, at once a clever physician and one of the kindest of men, named Alphonse Pasquier.  He was murdered by the Communards after the siege of Paris.

From Randan I went to Eu, for a second visit from Queen Victoria, which was favoured by splendid weather, and was as simple and affectionate in its nature as her first.

The year 1845 came to an end, and the first recollection that comes back to me in 1846 is that of a hunting-party, which was marked by a fresh attempt on my father’s life.  It was on the 15th of August.  We were all at Fontainebleau, whither the King was fond of going, to watch the progress of the splendid restoration of the galleries of Francis the First and Henri II., which he was having carried out.  I was boar-hunting that day with Henri Greffulhe’s pack.