which they contrived to struggle till, on the 20th of September, they made Syracuse, and were inexorably condemned to a quarantine of the legitimate forty days' duration. At the end of this time, an Austrian vessel conveyed them to Rome. After a brief but by no means a dull sojourn in that city, the Princess led the way to her home in the Villa d'Este, on the Lake of Como, where she and the Countess Oldi exhibited the proficiency they had acquired as travellers, by cooking their own dinners, and performing other little feats of amiable independency.

Marie

And now, as if to authorise the simile made with respect to the illustrious party, and their resemblance to a strolling company of players, private theatricals became the most frequent pastime of the lady of the villa and her friends. If she enacted the heroine, the Baron was sure to be the lover. Antoinette, it was said, used to act in plays on the little stage at Trianon. The case was not to be denied, but then the wife of Louis XVI. did not exchange mock heroics with an ex-courier. On the other hand, the dukes and counts she played with were often less respectable than the loosest of menials.

The agents, whose employers were to be found in England, had not been idle during the Princess's period of travel. They had been helped by none so effectually as by herself. She had courted infamy by her heedless conduct, and, cruelly as she was used, the blame does not rest wholly with her persecutors. Her indiscretions seemed indulged in expressly to give warrant for suspicion that she was more than indiscreet, and therewith even the most innocent incidents were twisted by the ingenuity of spies and their agents, into crimes. The Baron d'Ompteda had been the most assiduous and the best paid of the spies who hovered incessantly about her, to misrepresent all he was permitted to see. He was banished from the Austrian territory at the request of the Princess, whose champion, the gallant Lieutenant Hownam, sought in vain to bring him to battle, and punish him for his treachery towards a lady. On the other hand, the Austrian authorities commanded Bergami to divest himself of the Cross of Malta, which he was wearing

without legal authorisation-a disgrace which his rash and imprudent mistress thought she had effaced by purchasing for the disknighted chevalier an estate, and putting him in full possession of the rights and dignity of lord of the manor.

Early in 1817, the Princess repaired to Carlsruhe, on a visit to the Grand Duke of Baden. She was received courteously, but not warmly enough to induce her to make a long sojourn. Her next point was Vienna, from which city she had frightened Lord Stewart, the British ambassador, by an intimation that she was coming to take up her residence with him, and to demand satisfaction for the insults to which she had been subjected by persons who were spies upon her conduct. She experienced nothing but what she might have expected in Vienna-a contemptuous neglect; and soon quitting that city, she repaired to Trieste, and tarried long enough there to compel the least scrupulous to think that, if she possessed the most handsome of chamberlains, she was herself the weakest and least wise of ladies. He was now her constant and almost only attendant in public. English families had long ceased to show her any respect. They could not manifest it for a woman who, by courting an evil reputation, evidently did not respect herself. What was her being innocent, if she always so acted as to make herself appear guilty? She might as well have asserted that her openly attending mass with Bergami, was not to be taken as proof of her being a very indifferent Protestant.

She became in every sense of the word a mere wanderer, apparently without object, save flying from the memories which she could not cast off. She was constantly changing her residence, so constantly as to make her career somewhat difficult to follow; but we know that she was residing at Pescaro when she received intelligence which she least expected, and which deeply affected her. During her absence from England, her daughter had married Prince Leopold, and the mother had hoped to find friends at least in this pair, if not now, at some future period. But now she had heard that her child and her child's child were dead. "I have not only," she wrote to a

friend in England, "to lament an ever-beloved child, but one most warmly attached friend, and the only one I have had in England; but she is only gone before-I have not lost her, and I now trust we shall soon meet in a much better world than the present one. For ever your truly sincere friend, C. P."

This calamity, however, had no effect in rendering the writer more circumspect. Her course of life, without perhaps being one of the gross guilt it was described, was certainly one not creditable to her. Exaggerated reports, which grew as they were circulated, startled the ears of her friends, and gladdened the hearts of her enemies. They were at their very worst, when, in 1820, George III. ended his long reign, and Caroline, Princess of Wales, became Queen Consort of England.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE RETURN TO ENGLAND.

Report of the Milan commissioners-The Princess's determination to return to England-Studied neglect of her by Louis XVIII.-Lord Hutchinson's proposal to her to remain abroad-Her indignant refusal-Bergami's anger on the refusal of the proposition-Discourtesy of the French authorities to the Princess-Her reception in England--The Regent's message to parliament-The green bag-Sympathy for the Queen-Desire for a compromise evinced; meeting for the purpose at Lord Castlereagh's— The contending parties in parliament-Mr. Wilberforce as Mr. Harmony -Mr. Brougham, the Queen's especial advocate-The Queen's name in the Liturgy demanded-Mr. Denman's argument for it-Address of the House of Commons to the Queen-Her reply, and appeal to the nationA secret inquiry protested against The Queen at Waithman's shopViolence of party-spirit.

THE report rendered by the gentlemen who formed the Milan Commission to inquire secretly into the conduct of the Princess of Wales, was so unfavourable to the latter, that the Regent would have taken immediate steps to have procured a divorce, but for the assurance of his legal advisers that even in the case of the Princess becoming Queen Consort, she would never return to this country, provided only that the income assigned to her by parliament as Princess of Wales, were secured to her after she was Queen. There had been some negotiation to this effect in 1819, when it was understood that the title of Queen would never be assumed by the Princess if the payment of the annuity was punctually observed. Her most intimate friends, therefore, did not reckon upon her appearance in this country, after the accession of her husband to the throne.

Lord Liverpool addressed a letter to Mr. Brougham adverting to this arrangement, as having been originally proposed by Queen Caroline, a conclusion against which she protested with

great indignation. Her first step was to pass through France to St. Omer, where she awaited the arrival of her legal advisers. The then reigning French monarch had in the time of his own adversity received substantial aid and continual courtesy from the Queen's father: but now, in the hour of the distresses of his former benefactor's daughter, he beset her passage through France with difficulties, and commanded her to be treated with studied neglect. However mortified, she was a woman of too much spirit to allow her mortification to be visible, and for the lack of official honours she found consolation in the sympathy of the people.

At the inn at St. Omer she was met by Mr. Brougham and Lord Hutchinson. The latter came as the representative of the ministry, with no credentials, however, nor even with the ministerial proposition reduced to writing. The Queen refused to receive it in any other form. Lord Hutchinson obeyed, and made a written proposal to the effect that as she was now without income by the demise of George III., the King would grant her 50,000l. per annum, on the special condition that she remained on the continent, surrendered the title of queen, adopted no title belonging to the royal family of England, and never even visited the latter country under any pretext. It was further stated, that if she set foot in England, the negotiation would be at an end, the terms violated, and proceedings be commenced against her Majesty forthwith.

It has been said that the Queen's immediate and decided rejection of these proposals, and her resolution to proceed to England at once, were undoubted proofs of her innocence. The truth, however, is, that the acceptance of such terms would have been a tacit confession of her guilt, and had she been as criminal as her accusers endeavoured to prove her, her safest course would have been that which she so spiritedly adopted. The infamy, here, was undoubtedly on the part of the ministry. Here was a woman in whom they asserted was to be found the most profligate of her sex, and to her they made an offer of 50,000l. per annum, on condition that she laid down the title of Queen of England, of which they said she was entirely un