Page 61 of 171 III. THE PRINCES. - The Memoirs of Victor Hugo

III. THE PRINCES.

1847.

At the Tuileries the Prince de Joinville passes his time doing all sorts of wild things. One day he turned on all the taps and flooded the apartments. Another day he cut all the bell ropes. A sign that he is bored and does not know what to do with himself.

And what bores these poor princes most is to receive and talk to people ceremoniously. This is almost a daily obligation. They call it--for princes have their slang--"performing the function." The Duke de Montpensier is the only one who performs it gracefully. One day the Duchess d'Orleans asked him the reason. He replied: 'It amuses me."

He is twenty years old, he is beginning.

When the marriage of M. de Montpensier with the Infanta was published, the King of the Belgians was sulky with the Tuileries. He is an Orleans, but he is a Coburg. It was as though his left hand had smitten his right cheek.

The wedding over, while the young couple were making their way from Madrid to Paris, King Leopold arrived at Saint Cloud, where King Louis Philippe was staying. The King of the Belgians wore an air of coldness and severity. Louis Philippe, after dinner, took him aside into a recess of the Queen's drawing-room, and they conversed for fully an hour. Leopold's face preserved its thoughtful and *English* expression. However at the conclusion of the conversation, Louis Philippe said to him:

"See Guizot."

"He is precisely the man I do not want to see."

"See him," urged the King. "We will resume this conversation when you have done so."

The next day M. Guizot waited upon King Leopold. He had with him an enormous portfolio filled with papers. The King received him. His manner was cold in the extreme. Both were reserved. It is probable that M. Guizot communicated to the King of the Belgians all the documents relative to the marriage and all the diplomatic papers. No one knows what passed between them. What is certain is that when M. Guizot left the King's room Leopold's air was gracious, though sad, and that he was heard to say to the Minister as he took leave of him: "I came here greatly dissatisfied with you. I shall go away satisfied. You have, in fact, in this affair acquired a new title to my esteem and to our gratitude. I intended to scold you; I thank you."

These were the King's own words.

The Prince de Joinville's deafness increases. Sometimes it saddens him, sometimes he makes light of it. One day he said to me: "Speak louder, I am as deaf as a post." On another occasion he bent towards me and said with a laugh:

"~J'abaisse le pavillion de l'oreille.~"

"It is the only one your highness will ever lower," I replied.

M. de Joinville is of somewhat queer disposition. Now he is joyous to the point of folly, anon gloomy as a hypochondriac. He is silent for three days at a time, or his bursts of laughter are heard in the very attics of the Tuileries. When he is on a voyage he rises at four o'clock in the morning, wakes everybody up and performs his duties as a sailor conscientiously. It is as though he were to win his epaulettes afterwards.

		Every calling is great when greatly pursued. "Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr."

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