aving the church, she went to see the place where Bonchamp is
buried, and, under a tent, partook of a repast offered her by the
Countess d'Autichamp. She had recounted to her in detail the celebrated
passage of the Loire, the disastrous period when all the city of Saint
Florent was burned by order of the Convention, and the only house left
standing was the one occupied by the republican General LEchelle as his
headquarters.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, Madame embarked anew on the
steamboat awaiting her at the point of Varades, and proceeded in this
way to Nantes. The inhabitants from the two banks of the stream greeted
her upon her passage. The red aprons and white caps of the women
contrasted, in the landscape, with the sombre, costume of the men. That
she might be better recognized by the crowd, the Princess, clad in a
simple robe of brown silk, with a long chain of gold at the neck,
separated herself from her suite, mounted to the highest point on the
boat, and greeted with voice and gesture all these faithful people. The
men waved banners and standards. The women raised their little children
in their arms and said: "Look at her well; it's the mother of the Duke
of Bordeaux."

The people seemed to walk upon the water to get a nearer view of
Madame. Not a rock pushing out into the stream that was not occupied.
Where the Loire was too wide for the features of the Princess to be
seen from the shore, the dwellers on the banks had, so to speak,
brought them together, by forming in the middle of the stream streets
of boats, with their flags and their triumphal arches. At a league from
Saint Florent a rock juts into the water of the Loire. Here was an aged
Vendean, all alone, his white hair fluttering in the wind. Erect upon
the rock, he was holding a white flag, and at his feet was a dog. It
was, according to the Moniteur, a symbol of faithful Vendee.

The same day, June 22, at seven in the evening, the Princess reached
Nantes. She passed on foot from the Port Maillard to the Prefecture,
and had difficulty in getting through the innumerable multitude. The
next day she was at Savenay, where, on leaving the church, she paused
to contemplate the monument raised to the memory of the victims of the
battle of the 23d of September, 1793. The 24th, she went to Saint Anne
d'Auray, a pilgrimage venerated throughout all Brittany, and visited
the Champ des Martyrs, the little plain where thirty-three years
before, the EMIGRE