Note 258 — BOOK VIII[239]

By the old laws of the Monarchy, the majority of the Kings of France was fixed at the commencement of their fourteenth year. The memory of this law determined several hundreds of Frenchmen to go together to visit the Elder Branch of the Bourbons, at fifteen hundred miles from their country. This manifestation carried with it a certain hostility to the new Dynasty. The Government of July, accordingly, did not fail, naturally enough, when all is said and done, to put some petty annoyances in the way of the travellers. It prevailed upon the Austrian Government to turn a large number of them back at the frontiers. In Frankfort and Munich, King Louis-Philippe's chargés d'affaires refused to give the necessary visas; several were detained at Pilsen and Waldmünchen, as also at Mayence and Eger.

Moreover, this little manifestation was looked upon almost as unfavourably in Prague as in Paris. King Charles X. and his son, the Dauphin, had abdicated at Rambouillet, and they had no thought of withdrawing their respective abdications; only, in order to keep up the moral absence of responsibility of the Duc de Bordeaux and also to facilitate the relations between the exiles and the Cabinets, particularly the Cabinet of Vienna, they wished to retain, while on foreign soil, a title which seemed to them inseparable from that of heads of the Bourbon Family. The journey of the young Frenchmen who were coming to greet Henry of France on the day of his entering upon his fourteenth year might upset those private arrangements of the exiled Family. It was therefore not calculated to please the old King and his son. Hence the little incidents which the author of the Memoirs will presently describe to us.—B.

The Duc de Bordeaux was born on the 29th of September 1820, seven and a half months after his father's assassination, and therefore attained his majority, according to the laws of the French Monarchy, on the 29th of September 1833—T.