The

Princess Caroline; and her daughter, the | for playing the father of his people and ill-fated Charlotte, was as a sister to them. bestowing on every subject the Sunday Duke Charles's allegation to his last days poule au pot of Henry IV. He even bewas that the prince regent was anything gan to realize his reveries, in his own fitbut a father. He certainly at the general ful, fantastic way, but then Metterrich peace allowed the duchy to be despoiled, stepped in: a young prince was not going while be made a kingdom of his own Han- to be allowed to preach and practise subover; but his tutelage has not been proved versive humanitarianism in the heart of pernicious in design, if it gave rise to Germany, midway between the rememstrange rumors and some curious reali- bered '93 and the daily prophesied '48. ties. The arbitrary abduction of Thomas And so the young reformer was advised Prince, the young duke's chaplain and to open his mind by travel, go dance in tutor, has an ugly look, and his incarcera Berlin and Vienna and Paris, and finally tion for life in Bedlam has only been pay a long visit to that wicked uncle of lamely explained. The Baron von Lin his, the fat Adonis in four waistcoats who dingen, the new tutor, was sent with his ruled these shores. The uncle seems to charges to Lausanne, and, it is said, or- have behaved with more than avuncular dered to educate them in a manner that amiability outwardly, at least. should render them wholly incapable of young prince was treated like the chief of governing. They were kept separated a great State. The Duke of Wellington from their nearest kin, wandering pur- was deputed to receive him; state balls poselessly in Italy and southern Germany. were given in his honor; when he went to But the Brunswick legend is not to be Scotland, Edinburgh conferred on him the trusted. It accuses George IV. of having freedom of the city; he was created a bribed her doctor to procure Princess general and given the colonelcy of a Charlotte's death in childbirth; of having household regiment. The king regretted poisoned Queen Caroline with a glass of this last favor, by-the-by, and offered him lemonade administered at Drury Lane the garter in exchange. The duke reTheatre; of having assassinated Duke fused, and sent his uncle a few days after Augustus, the boys' uncle, two hours after his portrait in miniature, red-coated and he had dared present himself at a minis- cocked hatted. His chief companions terial council in Brunswick and claim a were the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex; share of the regency. That the king en- and to this last he first confided the undeavored to postpone the epoch of Duke fortunate passion or whim which led to his Charles's majority is certain; all Germany unhappy marriage. The story is a stale for more than a year was full of the wran-one. The prince remarked a young girl, gles of jurisconsults, historiographers, and diplomatists. But the duke had on his side a power that had made and unmade kings Metternich took up his cause, and at nineteen George IV.'s ward entered his own capital an independent sovereign, welcomed as interesting young princes new to their peoples generally

are.

The dominant idea in his clouded brain seems to have been an indomitable, almost a maniacal suspicion and dread of his English kinsmen. He would have no official who had been employed under the prince regent; he accused the chief of the Cabinet, then Schmidt Fiseldeck, of malversations, and demanded his extradition of Hanover. When the Duke of Cambridge returned his visit, he indulged his rancor childishly and made the obese old man travel all over the palace ere he reached his august presence. But together with these phantasies his mind nurtured vaguely generous thoughts of popular reform and redemption, dreams of schemes for a kind of Cæsarian socialism, projects

beautiful, well born, and of blameless char. acter. Miss Charlotte Colville was no sport for a royal holiday, she must be wife or nothing, and it suited her lover's pride, or convenience, to persuade her that she could be only a morganatic wife. He surrounded his courtship with a mystery less necessitated by the king's enmity than demanded by the duke's lifelong love of ridiculous romanticism. He chose to imagine that the king could prevent his marriage, and he swore to secrecy the Duke of Sussex, his ally-who had married Lady Augusta Murray in the same way, and was subsequently to contract a similar union with Cecilia Underwood. There was a nocturnal marriage, postchaises hurrying to Dover in the dead of night, a honeymoon almost in disguise in the centre of Paris-numberless puerile precautions suggested by the young duke's craze that emissaries were everywhere waiting to carry off his bride, to poison him, or worse, plunder him. There is no proof that the duke Charles even then contemplated repudiating his wife, albeit his sub

sequent conduct gives color to the story. | bled to welcome the exile. The Liberal For albeit in a few months the wife was duke became an autocrat and a half-detaken to Brunswick and installed in the mented autocrat in a few months. And castle of Wendessen, although she had like most despots he must have his favor. her chamberlain and her lady of honor, ite to lean on, or to lead him. His Steeshe lived rather the life, enjoyed the lux- nie, his Baron Stockmar, his buffoon and ury, of a Pompadour than a Maintenon. premier, was an underling in the War The duke dwelt daily on that superstitious Office, who had married the daughter of dread of England as a reason for not pub Miss Colville's cook. Bitter gained the licly acknowledging his marriage. His duke's good graces by exercising a singu infant daughter was baptized with regal lar mimic talent in the faithful reproduc ceremonial, the onyx ewer used at the tion of the mien and manner, the tricks coronation of the Kings of Jerusalem be- and tics of court personages, and by being ing brought out for the little Countess able to imitate on the piano an extravaof Colmar; but a year after, the duke gant peal of laughter. These gifts rapidly Charles sent his wife from Vienna a mes- earned him many profits and dignities; in sage so hopeless, so definite in its denial a few months he was Baron d'Andlau, of all matrimonial rights, that the de- and the duke's chief, his only adviser. By ceived Charlotte of this sorry Werther at this time the Brunswickers were openly once left Brunswick, carrying her daugh- disaffected, and appealed to the Diet to ter with her, but leaving behind every send federal troops to occupy the duchy. thing she and the child owed to the duke's The duke fled to Paris, praying Charles munificence. She never saw her husband X.'s protection against his subjects and again. His excuse the raison d'état his neighbors. The poor old Bourbon was too palpably lame. It was to George needed protection as much as his suppliIV.'s interest that the morganatic mar- ant; he sent the chief of the Brunswicks riage should be maintained, and the acci- the grand cross of the Legion of Honor in dent was too common in a house which diamonds, which the duke refused be. descended from petty gentry like the cause it was not the cross of St. Louis; D'Olbreuses and D'Estes - which allied and then came that famous Neapolitan itself with Luttrells, Walpoles, Under- merry making at the Palais Royal, the woods to be reasonably regarded as a dance on a volcano, the eruption, and the scandal. If King George was plotting flight of king and duke. The Revolution with the German Diet in order to obtain followed Duke Charles to Brussels, and bis nephew's interdiction, the imprudent thence to Brunswick, where his carriage marriage rather served his cause than in- was stoned, himself hooted, where the jured it. Notables formally demanded Liberal reforms, and a convocation of the StatesGeneral. The bold Brunswick haughtily refused to yield to violence, called his guards out and the next day left for England with sixteen wagons full of incalculable treasures behind him. He was wont to pretend that this was merely a little journey undertaken for the purpose of figuring at William IV.'s coronation; but the sixteen wagons argued somewhat forcibly against him. His subjects at least regarded his departure as final, for they burnt his palace, and acclaimed his brother as sovereign duke a few days later. From that day the Duke of Brunswick was a dethroned adventurer, a wan. dering millionaire.

The duke Charles saw plots everywhere the monomania by which he was misguided all his life. Over Queen Caroline's tomb in the Cathedral of SaintBlaise the Guelphs' Saint Denis-he inscribed, "Here rests Caroline of Brunswick, murdered queen of England." Finding a duel with King George himself impossible, he sent a challenge to Count Münster, who had been governor-general of the duchy during his tutelage, and this, and a subsequent cartel, he had published all over Germany. Then he commenced a furious and indiscriminate crusade against all the officials, high and low, who had served the State under the English administration. He dismissed and expelled Baron Sterstorpf, master of the In London he was a perpetual source of horse, and not only one of the wealthiest, social scandal and political annoyance. but one of the most respected noblemen His old companion William IV. received in his dominions; when the supreme court him coolly; the Duke of Wellington and of Wolfenbüttel declared the act illegal, Lord Aberdeen advised him to abdicate he had their decree publicly burnt; when in exchange for a body guard and a civil the Diet solemnly confirmed their deci- list of forty thousand pounds. He resion, he pointed guns at the crowd assem- fused all concessions and determined to

2560

He

"Isabelle " teams during the Empire. He
was one of the most constant subscribers
to the opera and the Italians, and at home
Rubini, Tamburini, Nourrit, Lablache,
Malibran, Grisi — and later, Auber, Ma-
rio, Rossini - were familiar guests.
mixed with his kind, he would enter into
a trotting match with the Duc d'Orléans
- his antagonism to the bourgeois dy
nasty making it a condition that the oppo-
nents should only salute with their whips.
He was an inveterate theatre-goer - in-
deed that he remained for many years; he
was a frequent visitor at many mansions
in the noble Faubourg; and he took a
wholesome, human interest in his daugh-
ter and her studies.

reconquer his duchy unaided. Never did foolish pretender plan a wilder expedition; the Bonapartists at Boulogne were sober-minded and practical politicians in comparison. Duke Charles had not an eagle in his hat, but he launched from Frankfort one of the fullest and most fantastic schemes of reform that ever came out of a crowned head. It abolished at one blow conscription (as the army was abolished too, this was hardly necessary), all feudal rights and privileges; it divided the great ducal apanages between him and his people; it confiscated all the lands of the aristocracy and sold them for the benefit of the poor; it established trial by jury; it exempted the poorer classes from taxation; it declared that magistrates, But the deadly germs of pride and avamayors, and priests should be appointed rice were already swelling apace, and the by election, and it gave every adult citi- little good grain was going. He had alzen a vote. This and a few thousand tri-ready begun to defend his prodigious color cockades were the chief weapons purse against the world-savagely sus relied upon by the duke. They failed pecting a waiter of a plot to cheat him in signally. He got together a rabble of rendering change, a laundress of having peasants, and after a parley with the Bruns charged for two more shirts than had wick troops at the frontier, retired without been sent. His secretary, Isidore Fort, drawing sword. Again in Paris, the duke was perpetually appearing before the juge devoted his leisure to protesting right and de paix to plead for his magnificent masleft against his brother's usurpation, and ter against petty creditors demanding a to drawing up schemes of Liberal-Legiti- hundred francs, claiming the cost of mist revolutions, with the result that stamps, cab-hire, and what not. He had Louis Philippe's government decided to already begun to construct his house like conduct him to the frontier, and really did a fortress. At the head of his bed there arrest and convey to Switzerland - a foot was a species of stone cupboard, which at man, Chevaly, who resembled his master the turn of a screw could be sunk into a sufficiently to need but a few cosmetics to well fifty yards beneath the basement. appear the duke himself. The real duke There his most precious deeds and documeanwhile remained in Paris, in a stu- ments, treasures and heirlooms, were dedent's one room in the Latin quarter, posited. The cellars were strongholds gathering together a formidable array of like those of the Bank of France. There legal luminaries, raising a mountain of were iron cases crammed with guineas precedents and counsels' opinions, exer- bearing the effigy of all the Brunswickers cising for the first time that petty genius who had reigned in England. There were for litigation which was the chief trait in coffers untouched since Waterloo, which his intellect during the latter part of his contained gold pieces of eight generations career. He won his cause; the decree of of dukes; and there were thousands of expulsion was revoked, and the duke was ten-thaler pieces bearing his own bust, allowed to take root in Paris by buying which had never been and would never be the famous hotel in the Champs Elysées, put into circulation. A secret staircase which became afterwards the residence of led into this Ali Baba's cave. Its enQueen Christine of Spain. He was not trance was a supposed wardrobe in the then the monster of meanness and vanity duke's bed chamber; it continued to the this present generation knew, but the baron Andlau's apartments above. The process of perversion was beginning. He work had been executed by relays of was a fair-haired, comely little fellow, who workmen utterly unknown to each other; put heels inside his miraculously small only Duke Charles and his chamberlain shoes in order to appear two inches taller. held keys of the secret doors. When the He was a daring and adroit rider, an ac- secret was discovered by police officers complished and enlightened musician. He called in after a robbery in the hotel, the lived the life of a man of fashion, not that master at once resolved to sell his propof a vicious recluse. His tiger-skinned erty. At this period appeared the first horses were famous then as his yellow sketches of that extraordinary work of art