(a prince surreptitiously intruded) but to the
posterity of the second son of Louis XIII. from whom is derived the
branch of Orleans, and who was, without dispute, the legitimate and
unobjectionable offspring of Louis XIII."
--New Considerations on the Iron Mask.--Memoirs of the Duc de
Richelieu.
The author of the above Memoirs adds, that after the taking of the
Bastille, new attempts were made to propagate this opinion, and that he
himself had refuted it to many people, by producing original letters and
papers, sufficiently demonstrative of its absurdity.
--He might hope, by popularity, to supersede the children of the Count
d'Artois, who was hated; but an immediate heir to the Crown could be
removed only by throwing suspicions on his legitimacy. These
pretensions, it is true, were so absurd, and even incredible, that had
they been urged at the time, no inference in the Queen's favour would
have been admitted from them; but as the existence of such projects,
however absurd and iniquitous, has since been demonstrated, one may now,
with great appearance of reason, allow them some weight in her
justification.
The affair of the necklace was of infinite disservice to the Queen's
reputation; yet it is remarkable, that the most furious of the Jacobins
are silent on this head as far as it regarded her, and always mention the
Cardinal de Rohan in terms that suppose him to be the culpable party:
but, "whatever her faults, her woes deserve compassion;" and perhaps the
moralist, who is not too severe, may find some excuse for a Princess,
who, at the age of sixteen, possibly without one real friend or
disinterested adviser, became the unrestrained idol of the most
licentious Court in Europe.
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