" He was wounded at the close of the
Russian campaign. Then his young wife crossed all Europe to go and
care for him and saved him. She was but twenty. She was only
twenty-four when Louis XVIII. named her lady of honor to the
Duchess of Berry. Despite her extreme youth, she filled her
delicate functions with exquisite tact and precocious wisdom, and
from the first exercised a happy influence over the mind of the
Princess, who gladly listened to her counsels. Very active in
work, the lady of honor busied herself with untiring zeal with the
details of her charge. She was the directress, the secretary, the
factotum, of the Duchess of Berry. The Abbe Tripied, who
pronounced her funeral eulogy at Bar-le-Duc, May 21st, 1868,
traced a very lifelike portrait of her. Let us hear the
ecclesiastic witness of the high virtues of this truly superior
woman.
"She bore," he said, "with equal force and sagacity her titles of
lady of honor and Duchess of Reggio. Proud of her blason, where
were crossed the arms of the old and of the new nobility, and
where she saw, as did the King, a sign, as it were, of
reconciliation and peace, she bore it high and firm, and defended
it in its new glories, against insulting attacks. An ornament to
the court, by her graces and her high distinction, she displayed
there, for the cause of the good, all the resources of her mind
and the riches of her heart.
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