There are no greater contrasts than those which are to be found in royal
lives. When the Princess Victoria was about to set out on her pleasant
journey in peace and prosperity, the news came of the arrest of the
Duchesse de Berri, at Nantes. It was the sequel to her gallant but
unsuccessful attempt to raise La Vendee in the name of her young son, Henri
de Bordeaux, and the end to the months in which she had lain in hiding.
She was discovered in the chimney of a house in the Rue Haute-du-Chateau,
where she was concealed with three other conspirators against the
Government of her cousin, Louis Philippe. The search had lasted for several
hours, during which these unfortunate persons were penned in a small space
and exposed to almost intolerable heat. A mantelpiece had been contrived so
as to turn on a swivel and form an opening into a suffocating recess. When
the Duchesse and her companions were found their hands were scorched and
part of their clothes burnt. She was taken to the fortress of Nantes, and
thence transferred to the Castle of Blaze, where she suffered a term of
imprisonment. She had acted entirely on her own responsibility, her wild
enterprise having being disapproved alike by her father-in-law, Charles X.,
and her brother and sister-in-law, the Duc and Duchesse d'Angouleme.

In 1833, we are told, the Duchess of Kent and the fourteen years old
Princess stopped on their way to Weymouth--the old favourite watering-place
of King George and Queen Charlotte--and visited the young Queen of
Portugal, at Portsmouth. Donna Maria da Gloria had been sent from Brazil to
England by her father, Don Pedro, partly for her safety, partly under the
impression, which proved false, that the English Government would take an
active part in her cause against the usurpation of her uncle, Don Miguel.
The Government did nothing. The royal family paid the stranger some courtly
and kindly attentions. One of the least exceptional passages in the late
Charles Greville's Memoirs is the description of the ball given by the