THE COMTE DE CHAMBORD AND PHILIPPE

ÉGALITÉ.

CHAM. Let me pass, Monseigneur! Your presence is hateful to me. Shadow as you are, I see you through a deeper shade. There is a mist of blood around your head.

PHIL. Probably an effect of the national razor, Sire. A second aureole of martyrdom conferred upon our family. CHAM. Assassin of your king and kinsman! It well becomes you to thrust. his title in mockery upon his heir.

PHIL. Plus royaliste que le roi, it seems. The good Louis has long since listened to reason. Do not disconcert him with so ridiculous a spectacle as that of an implacable grand-nephew.

CHAM. The Royal martyr was too faithful a follower of his Divine model not to have forgiven his enemies. But Monarchy does not and cannot pardon its recreant children as a monarch may forgive his treacherous kin: and as the last representative of the House of France I can hold no converse with the worst of its enemies.

PHIL. Last representative? Nay, Sire, I cannot allow such a phrase to pass unchallenged. In the name of the

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Monarchy to which you have yourself appealed, I must protest against such a slight being put upon the family of Orleans.

CHAM. What? You appeal to the monarchy in the name of your descendants? Such effrontery as that amazes me even in you. The present head of the House of Orleans

PHIL. Is now, with submission, Sire, the heir to the crown of France. Perhaps you will hold sufficient converse with me to acknowledge that.

CHAM. If I prolong this colloquy at all, it is that I may reject that claim with all the disdain which it deserves. The heir to the crown of France, by the renunciation of his father, is Don Carlos of Spain.

PHIL. Your Majesty's chagrin at the extinction of the elder branch in France is intelligible and has my profoundest sympathy. But it betrays you into unfortunate extravagances. The claim of Don Carlos is barred by the Treaty of Utrecht, and I know that you are not of those who hold that a Spanish Royal decree could have revived it. If Spain chose to oust the heir male of Ferdinand VII. tracing from Philip V., by abolishing the Salic law, so much the worse for the heir male. It could not have re-established him in pretensions which his ancestor pledged himself to all Europe to abandon. I know, however, that you do not rely upon diplomatic pettifoggeries of that kind.

CHAM. No, indeed! I no more recognize the possibility of a treaty-made or treaty-marred right divine than I can admit the existence of a "constitutional title." The

settlement of Utrecht could no more deprive Don Carlos of his God-conferred attribute of royalty than a vote of the French Chamber could confer it upon your son's grandson. PHIL. No, Sire? Nor than your own recognition of my son's grandson?

CHAM. Recognition, Monseigneur? I do not understand you.

PHIL. What? Do you repudiate the arrangement of Frohsdorf? Would you undo the work of the Fusion? CHAM. It is evident, Monseigneur, that you are the victim of some singular delusion. I know of no “arrangement of Frohsdorf," and the incident to which I suppose you to refer as "the Fusion" is strangely misdescribed by that name. I remember indeed a visit paid some ten years ago by certain descendants, lineal and collateral, of a usurping Duke of Orleans, to the heir of their lawful and unlawfully deposed sovereign; and, in obedience to the Divine command which enjoins clemency especially upon kings, I received them graciously. But I know not why this tardy act of penance for their ancestor's sin, this long delayed renewal of their own allegiance, should be called by such unmeaning names. The return of deserters to their flag is not usually styled "fusion" but submission, not arrangement but atonement.

PHIL. Do you think, Sire, that the Orleanist branch of the Royalist party so understood the transaction? CHAM. I know of no Orleanist branch of the Royalist party. The very phrase is a monstrous abuse of language. An Orleanist Royalist is as much a contradiction in terms as a Monarchical Republican. "Orleanist" is as much the

name of a disloyal faction as "Bonapartist." Legitimist and Royalist are convertible terms, and not till an Orleanist discards his name to assume the former title does he acquire the right to use the latter.

PHIL. Names, I fear, have always filled too important a place in your Majesty's mind. However, I quite agree with you that Royalist and Legitimist have now become convertible terms, but they have become so by becoming jointly convertible with Orleanist. Mohammed has come to the mountain instead of the mountain going to Mohammed, voilà tout! Madame la Comtesse de Chambord has obligingly settled the question in the most conclusive manner by bearing you no children. And in this case of widowhood, I imagine, there is no chance of a second enfant du miracle. Divine Providence indeed has been sufficiently wasteful of its wonders already. It was hardly worth a miracle to prolong an expiring family for a single life. But the prayer of a righteous man, and still more of a righteous woman, availeth much; and Madame la Duchesse de Berri was in every way irresistible.

CHAM. Your ribaldry, Monseigneur, is out of date. Had you lived a century later, you would have learnt that even the vilest of profligates is nowadays accustomed to render homage to decency in his talk.

PHIL. I humbly submit, Sire, to your Royal rebuke. But I shall never cease to wonder in silence at the singular futility of that latest intervention of Providence in our national affairs.

CHAM. It was the will of God, who brings low the mightiest things of earth, that the direct French line of

the Grand Monarque should end with a prince of such a fate and history as mine.

PHIL. From Augustus to Augustulus-though he, by the way, died fighting, face to face with his foes. But I forgot, Sire, you read nothing but your "Hours." It is as you say. The French line of the Grand Monarque becomes extinct with you. But be comforted. You have the consolation of reflecting that the blood of Henri Quatre is still represented in the person of my own descendants. Forgive me for thinking that the lineage which thus survives is the worthier of the two.

CHAM. I can quite understand that you prefer to trace descent from Henri, rather than from Louis.

PHIL. You rightly appreciate the disposition of the family. We certainly prefer to have sprung from the statesman who promulgated the Edict of Nantes rather than from the bigot who revoked it.

CHAM. You are at any rate the true heirs of the conqueror who trucked his religion for a crown. You yourself, Monseigneur, had none of that commodity to take to market, but you were eager in the sale of what you had—your duty as a Prince of the blood Royal, your loyalty as a subject. It was from want of skill and not of will that you failed to gain the throne you intrigued for, and which your son by a more expert employment of the paternal tactics contrived to secure. The unscrupulous statecraft of our Béarnais ancestor unquestionably survived unto the sixth and seventh generation. I doubt not that it will appear in the

ninth.