any love for that
court, but simply from dread and hatred of the republican principles
advocated by Napoleon. She, therefore, often treated the English with
the utmost disdain. And yet, sustained by twenty thousand British
troops upon the island, she trampled upon all popular rights,
consigning, by arbitrary arrests, to the dungeon or to exile all who
opposed her sway.

"Against these violations of law, infringements of liberty, and
manifestations of absolutism, the Sicilians rose with becoming
firmness. The Duke of Orleans had long foreseen the approaching
hurricane, the gathering wrath of an injured people; but finding his
remonstrances vain, his principles of government almost directly
contrary to those of his august mother-in-law, he retired from a
court where there was no room for a virtuous counsellor, and, with
his wife and her infant prince, lived in retirement a few miles from
Palermo."[M]

[Footnote M: Life and Times of Louis Philippe.]

The duke was living tranquilly, and perhaps not unhappily, in this
retirement, abstaining from all participation in the intrigues of the
Sicilian Court, when, on the morning of the 23d of April, 1814, an
English frigate, with every banner floating triumphantly in the
breeze, entered the harbor of Palermo. It brought the astounding
intelligence of the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the
Bourbons. The exciting tidings soon reached the ears of the duke. He
hurried to Palermo, and drove directly to the palace of the English
ambassador, where he was greeted with the words:

"I congratulate you upon the downfall of Napoleon, and on the
restoration of the illustrious race, of which you yourself are a
member, to the throne of their fathers."

For a moment the duke was speechless with astonishment, and then
declared the story to be quite incredible. He however was soon
convinced that it was even so, by reading a copy of the _Moniteur_,
which gave a detailed account of the whole event. All the shipping
and all the forts of Palermo were now resounding with the thunders of
exultation. The Duke of Orleans had fought under the tri-color flag.
Mingled emotions agitated him. He saw that national banner which had
waved so proudly over many a field of victory now trampled in the
dust beneath the feet of foreign squadrons, and their allied armies
exultingly encamped within the parks of his native city. The
restoration of the Bourbons had been accomplished at the expense of
the hu