t may save
some unfortunates."

The Treasurer responded: "Madame, I should be eager to obey the orders
of Her Royal Highness, but she has nothing, or almost nothing, in her
treasury."

A feeling of discontent was strongly depicted on the face of Madame,
who was about to give expression to it, when M. de Mesnard hastened to
say that the funds of the First Equerry were in better state than those
of the Treasurer, and remitted to the latter the twelve thousand
francs, which were distributed to the poor that evening according to
the Princess's wishes.

The Duchess of Berry had the double gift of pleasing and making herself
loved. All the persons of her household, all her servitors, from the
great nobles and great ladies to the domestics and the chamber-maids,
were deeply devoted to her. Poor or rich, she had attentions for all.
Listen to the Count de Mesnard:--

"Madame is incessantly making presents to all who approach her. At New
Year's her apartments are a veritable bazaar furnished from all the
shops of Paris; her provision, made from every quarter, is universal,
from bon-bons to the most precious articles--everything is there.
Madame has thought of each specially; the people of her own service are
not forgotten any more than the ladies and officers of her household;
father, mother, children, every one, is included in the distribution.
The royal family naturally comes first; next, the numerous relatives of
the Palais Royal, of whom she is very fond; then her family at Naples,
which is also numerous; and finally all of us, masters and servants, we
all have our turn."

No one, we think, has made a more exact portrait of the Duchess of
Berry than the Count Armand de Pontmartin, who is so familiar with the
Restoration. In his truthful and lively Souvenirs d'un vieux critique,
how well he presents "this flower of Ischia or of Castellamare,
transplanted to the banks of the Seine, under the gray sky of Paris, to
this Chateau des Tuileries, which the revolutions peopled with phantoms
before making it a spectre."

How really she was "this good Duchess, so French and so Neapolitan at
once, half Vesuvius, half school-girl, whom nothing must prevent us
from honoring and loving." The chivalric and sentimental rhetoric of
the time, the elegies of the poets, the noble prose of Chateaubriand,
the tearful articles of the royalist journals, have condemned her to
appear forever solemn and sublime. It was sought to confine her yout