Chapter 18

LOUIS PHILIPPE IN EXILE.

May 3, 1848.

The Orleans family in England are literally in poverty;
they are twenty-two at table and drink water. There is
not the slightest exaggeration in this. Absolutely all they
have to live upon is an income of about 40,000 francs made
up as follows: 24,000 francs a year from Naples, which
came from Queen Marie Amélie, and the interest on a sum
of 340,000 francs which Louis Philippe had forgotten under
the following circumstances: During his last triumphal
voyage made in October, 1844, with the Prince de Joinville,
he had a credit of 500,000 francs opened for him with
a London banker. Of this sum he spent only 160,000
francs. He was greatly amazed and very agreeably surprised
on arriving in London to find that the balance of
the 500,000 francs remained at his disposal.

M. Vatout is with the Royal Family. For the whole of
them there are but three servants, of whom one, and one
only, accompanied them from the Tuileries. In this state
of destitution they demanded of Paris the restitution of
what belongs to them in France; their property is under
seizure, and has remained so notwithstanding their
reclamations. For different reasons. One of the motives put
forward by the Provisional Government is the debt of the
civil list, which amounts to thirty millions. Queer ideas
about Louis Philippe were entertained. He may have been
covetous, but he certainly was not miserly; he was the most
prodigal, the most extravagant and least careful of men:
he had debts, accounts and arrears everywhere. He owed
700,000 francs to a cabinet-maker; to his market gardener
he owed 70,000 francs *for butter*.

Consequently none of the seals placed on the property
could be broken and everything is held to secure the
creditors--everything, even to the personal property of the
Prince and Princess de Joinville, rentes, diamonds, etc.,
even to a sum of 198,000 francs which belongs in her own
right to the Duchess d'Orleans.

All that the Royal Family was able to obtain was their
clothing and personal effects, or rather what could be found
of these. Three long tables were placed in the theatre of
the Tuileries, and on these were laid out all that the
revolutionists of February had turned over to the governor of
the Tuileries, M. Durand Saint-Amand. It formed a queer
medley--court costumes stained and torn, grand cordons of
the Legion of Honour that had been trailed through the
mud, stars of foreign orders, swords, diamond crowns, pearl
necklaces, a collar of the Golden Fleece, etc. Each legal
representative of the princes, an aide-de-camp or secretary,
took what he recognised. It appears that on the whole
little was recovered. The