former domain and privileges of the House
of Orleans. This was not easy. It required not only the good-will of
the Chateau, but the vote of the Chambers, and the majority was hardly
favorable to the Duke of Orleans, of whom it cherished the same
suspicions as Louis XVIII. The Duchess of Berry pleaded warmly the
cause of her aunt's husband, and conspired with Charles X. against the
Right, the members of which in this case believed it a service to
royalty to disobey the King. The opposition to the project seemed
likely to be so strong, that the government was obliged to commit a
sort of moral violence upon the Chamber of Deputies. The King directed
his ministers to join in some way the question of the apanages of the
House of Orleans with the disposition of his own civil list. The King
thought that the sentiments of the Chamber for himself and his family
would make them adopt the whole en bloc. It was a device of his
kindliness, a sort of smuggling in the King's coach, as was said by M.
de Labourdonnaye. A large number of deputies demanded a division of the
question. The ministers had to make great efforts and mount the tribune
many times to defend the measure, which passed only by a very feeble
majority. The Duke of Orleans, now at the very height of his desires,
thanked Charles X. with effusion.
Nor was this all; from the millions of indemnity to the emigres, the
Duke of Orleans drew 14,000,000 francs. The opposition chiefs of the
Left imitated the Prince and profited largely by the law that they had
opposed and condemned. The Duke of Choiseul obtained 1,100,000 francs,
the Duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt 1,400,000 francs, M. Gaetan de
La Rochefoucauld 1,429,000 francs, General Lafayette himself 1,450,000
francs.
The Orleanist party was already beginning to take form, perhaps without
the knowledge of its chief. In his pamphlets of 1824, Paul-Louis
Courier devoted himself to separating the older from the younger branch
of the House, declaring that he should like to be a resident of a
commune of Paris if the Duke of Orleans were its mayor, for from a
Prince the Duke had become a man during the Emigration, and had never
begged bread of a foreign hand. Louis-Philippe continued prudently the
role he had played at the end of the first Restoration and during the
Hundred Days. While professing an obsequious and enthusiastic respect
for Charles X., he secretly flattered the Bonapartists and the
Liberals. He sent his elde
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