Author: Prince De Joinville
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5716] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on August 14, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK, memoirs ***
This eBook was produced by Juliet Sutherland, Rose
Koven, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
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Memoirs
(Vieux souvenirs)
of the
prince de Joinville
Translated from the French
by
lady Mary Loyd
1818-1830
I was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts
of Paris, on the 14th of August, 1818. Immediately
after my birth, and as soon as the Chancellor of France,
M. Dambray, had declared me to be a boy, I was made
over to the care of a wet nurse and another attendant.
Three years later I passed out of female hands, earlier,
somewhat, than is generally the case, for a little
accident befell my nurse, in which my eldest brother’s
tutor, an unfrocked priest, as he was then discovered
to be, was also concerned. My earliest memory,
and a very hazy one it is, mixed up with some story
or other about a parrot, is of having seen my grandmother,
the Duchesse d’Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry.
After that I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon
with my great-aunt, the Duchesse de Bourbon, a tiny
little woman; and being taken to see the Princesse
Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember
seeing Talma act in Charles the Bold, and the great
impression his gilt cuirass made upon me.
But the first event that really is exceedingly clear
in my recollection is a family dinner given by Louis
XVIII. at the Tuileries on Twelfth Night, 1824.
Even now, sixty-six years after, I can see every detail
of that party, as if it had been yesterday. Our
arrival in the courtyard of the Tuileries, under the
salute of the Swiss Guard at the Pavillon Marsan and
the King’s Guard at the Pavillon de Flore.
Our getting out of the carriage under the porch of
the stone staircase to the deafening rattle of the
drums of the Cent Suisses. Then my huge astonishment
when we had to stand aside halfway up the stairs,
to let “La viande du Roi,” in other words,
his Majesty’s dinner, pass by, as it was being
carried up from the kitchen to the first floor, escorted
by his bodyguard.
