Among so many worse than doubtful friends, Charles, after 1746, took his own course; even his father knew little or nothing of his movements.  Between his departure from Avignon (February 1749) and the accession of Pickle to the Hanoverian side (Autumn 1749 or 1750), Charles baffled every Foreign Office in Europe.  Indeed, Pickle was of little service till 1751 or 1752.  Curious light on Charles’s character, and on the entangled quarrels of the Jacobites, is cast by d’Argenson’s ‘Mémoires.’  In Spring, 1747, the Duke of York disappeared from Paris, almost as cleverly as Charles himself could have done.  D’Argenson thus describes his manœuvre.  ‘He fled from Paris with circumstances of distinguished treachery’ (insigne fourberie) towards his brother, the Prince.  He invited Charles to supper; his house was brilliantly lighted up; all his servants were in readiness; but he had made his escape by five o’clock in the afternoon, aided by Cardinal Tencin.  His Governor, the Chevalier Graeme, was not in the secret.  The Prince waited for him till midnight, and was in a mortal anxiety.  He believed that the English attempts to kidnap or assassinate himself had been directed against his brother.  At last, after three days, he received a letter from the Duke of York, ‘explaining his fatal design’ to accept a cardinal’s hat.  ‘Prince Charles is determined never to return to Rome, but rather to take refuge in some hole in a rock.’

Charles, in fact, saw that, if he was to succeed in England, he could not have too little connection with Rome.  D’Argenson describes his brother Henry as ‘Italian, superstitious, a rogue, avaricious, fond of ease, and jealous of the Prince.’  Cardinal Tencin, he says, and Lord and Lady Lismore, have been bribed by England to wheedle Henry into the cardinalate, ‘which England desires more than anything in the world.’  Charles expressed the same opinion in an epigram.  Lady Lismore, for a short time believed to be the mistress of Louis XV., was deeply suspected.  Whatever may be the truth of these charges, M. de Puysieux, an enemy of Charles, succeeded at the Foreign Office to d’Argenson, who had a queer sentimental liking for the Prince.  Cardinal Tencin was insulted, and was hostile; the Lismores were absolutely estranged, if not treacherous; there was a quarrel between James and Henry in Rome, and Charles, in Paris. [35a]  Such was the state of affairs at the end of 1747, while Pickle was still a prisoner in the Tower of London, engaged, he tells us, in acts of charity towards his fellow-captives!

Meanwhile Charles’s private conduct demands a moment’s attention.  Madame de Pompadour was all powerful at Court. [35b]  This was, therefore, a favourable moment for Charles, in a chivalrous affection for the injured French Queen (his dead mother’s kinswoman), to insult the reigning favourite.  Madame de Pompadour sent him billets on that thick smooth vellum paper of hers, sealed with the arms of France.  The Prince tossed them into the fire and made no answer; it is Pickle who gives us this information.  Maria Theresa later stooped to call Madame de Pompadour her cousin.  Charles was prouder or less politic; afterwards he stooped like Maria Theresa.

For his part, says d’Argenson, the Prince ‘now amused himself with love affairs.  Madame de Guémené almost ravished him by force; they have quarrelled, after a ridiculous scene; he is living now with the Princesse de Talmond.  He is full of fury, and wishes in everything to imitate Charles XII. of Sweden and stand a siege in his house like Charles XII. at Bender.’  This was in anticipation of arrest, after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in which his expulsion from France was one of the conditions.  This Princesse de Talmond, as we shall see, was the unworthy Flora Macdonald of Charles in his later wanderings, his protectress, and, unlike Flora, his mistress.  She was not young; Madame d’Aiguillon calls her vieille femme in a curious play, ‘La Prison du Prince Charles Edouard Stuart,’ written by d’Argenson in imitation of Shakespeare. [36a]  The Princesse, née Marie Jablonowski, a cousin of the Queen of France and of Charles, married Anne Charles Prince de Talmond, of the great house of La Trimouille, in 1730.  She must have been nearly forty in 1749, and some ten years older than her lover.

We shall later, when Charles is concealed by the Princesse de Talmond, present the reader with her ‘portrait’ by the mordant pen of Madame du Deffand.  Here Voltaire’s rhymed portrait may be cited:

Les dieux, en la donnant naissance
Aux lieux par la Saxe envahis,
Lui donnèrent pour récompense
Le goût qu’on ne trouve qu’en France,
   Et l’esprit de tous les pays.

The Princesse, who frequented the Philosophes, appears to have encouraged Charles in free thinking and ostentatious indifference in religion.

‘He is a handsome Prince, and I should love him as much as my wife does,’ says poor M. de Talmond, in d’Argenson’s play, ‘but why is he not saintly, and ruled by the Congrégation de Saint Ignace, like his father?  It is Madame de Talmond who preaches to him independence and incredulity.  She is bringing the curse of God upon me.  How old will she be before the conversion for which I pray daily to Saint François Xavier?’

Such was Madame de Talmond, an old mistress of a young man, flighty, philosophical, and sharp of tongue.

On July 18, 1748, Charles communicated to Louis XV. his protest against the article of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which drove him out of every secular state in Europe.  Louis broke a solemn treaty by assenting to this article.  Charles published his protest and sent it to Montesquieu.  He complained that Montesquieu had not given him the new edition of his book on the Romans.  ‘La confiance devroit être mieux établi entre les auteurs: j’espère que ma façon de penser pour vous m’attirera la continuation de votre bonne volonté pour moi.’ [37a]  Montesquieu praised Charles’s ‘simplicity, nobility, and eloquence’: ‘comme vous le dites très bien, vous estes un auteur.’  ‘Were you not so great a Prince, the Duchesse de Guillon’ (d’Aiguillon) ‘and I would secure you a place in the Academy.’

The Duchesse d’Aiguillon, who later watched by Montesquieu’s death-bed, was a friend of Charles.  She and Madame de Talmond literally ‘pull caps’ for him in d’Argenson’s play.  But she was in favour of his going to Fribourg with a pension after the Peace: Madame de Talmond encouraged resistance.  Louis’s minister, M. de Cousteille, applied to Fribourg for an asylum for Charles on June 24, 1748.  On September 8, Burnaby wrote, for England, a long remonstrance to the ‘Laudable States of Fribourg,’ calling Charles ‘this young Italian!’  The States, in five lines, rebuked Burnaby’s impertinence, as ‘unconfined in its expressions and so unsuitable to a Sovereign State that we did not judge it proper to answer it.’ [38a]

Prince Charles, about 1734. From a miniature at Strathtyrum

To Fribourg Charles would not go.  He braved the French Court in every way.  He even insisted on a goldsmith’s preferring his order for a great service of plate to the King’s, and, having obtained the plate, he feasted the Princesse de Talmond, his friend and cousin, the Duc de Bouillon, and a crowd of other distinguished people. [38b]  In his demeanour Charles resolutely affronted the French Ministers.  There were terrible scenes with Madame de Talmond, especially when Charles was forbidden the house by her husband.  Charles was led away from her closed door by Bulkeley, the brother-in-law of Marshal Berwick, and a friend of Montesquieu’s. [39a]  Thus the violence which afterwards interrupted and ended Charles’s liaison with Madame de Talmond had already declared itself.  One day, according to d’Argenson, the lady said, ‘You want to give me the second volume in your romance of compromising Madame de Montbazon [his cousin] with your two pistol-shots.’  No more is known of this adventure.  But Charles was popular both in Court and town: his resistance to expulsion was applauded.  De Gèvres was sent by the King to entreat Charles to leave France; ‘he received de Gèvres gallantly, his hand on his sword-hilt.’  D’Argenson saw him at the opera on December 3, 1748, ‘fort gai et fort beau, admiré de tout le public.’

On December 10, 1748, Charles was arrested at the door of the opera house, bound hand and foot, searched, and dragged to Vincennes.  The deplorable scene is too familiar for repetition.  One point has escaped notice.  Charles (according to d’Argenson) had told de Gèvres that he would die by his own hand, if arrested.  Two pistols were found on him; he had always carried them since his Scottish expedition.  But a pair of compasses was also found.  Now it was with a pair of compasses that his friend, Lally Tollendal, long afterwards attempted to commit suicide in prison.  The pistols were carried in fear of assassination, but what does a man want with a pair of compasses at the opera? [40a]

After some days of detention at Vincennes, Charles was released, was conducted out of French territory, and made his way to Avignon, where he resided during January and February 1749.  He had gained the sympathy of the mob, both in Paris and in London.  Some of the French Court, including the Dauphin, were eager in his cause.  Songs and poems were written against Louis XV, D’Argenson, as we know, being out of office, composed a play on Charles’s martyrdom.  So much contempt for Louis was excited, that a nail was knocked into the coffin of French royalty.  The King, at the dictation of England, had arrested, bound, imprisoned, and expelled his kinsman, his guest, and (by the Treaty of Fontainebleau) his ally.

Applause and pity from the fickle and forgetful the Prince had won, but his condition was now desperate.  Refusing to accept a pension from France, he was poor; his jewels he had pawned for the Scottish expedition.  He had disobeyed his father’s commands and mortally offended Louis by refusing to leave France.  His adherents in Paris (as their letters to Rome prove) were in despair.  His party, as has been shown, was broken up into hostile camps.  Lochiel was dead.  Lord George Murray had been insulted and estranged.  The Earl Marischal had declined Charles’s invitation to manage his affairs (1747).  Elcho was a persistent and infuriated dun.  Clancarty was reviling Charles, James, Louis, England, and the world at large.  Madame de Pompadour, Cardinal Tencin, and de Puysieux were all hostile.  The English Jacobites, though loyal, were timid.  Europe was hermetically sealed against the Prince.  Refuge in Fribourg, where the English threatened the town, Charles had refused.  Not a single shelter was open to him, for England’s policy was to drive him into the dominions of the Pope, where he would be distant and despised.  Of advisers he had only such attached friends as Henry Goring, Bulkeley, Harrington, or such distrusted boon companions as Kelly—against whom the English Jacobites set all wheels in motion.  Charles’s refuge at Avignon even was menaced by English threats directed at the Pope.  The Prince tried to amuse himself; he went to dances, he introduced boxing matches, [41a] just as years before he had brought golf into Italy.  But his position was untenable, and he disappeared.

From the gossip of d’Argenson we have learned that Charles was no longer the same man as the gallant leader of the race to Derby, or the gay and resourceful young Ascanius who won the hearts of the Highlanders by his cheerful courage and contented endurance.  He was now embittered by defeat; by suspicions of treachery which the Irish about him kindled and fanned, by the broken promises of Louis XV., by the indifference of Spain.  He had become ‘a wild man,’ as his father’s secretary, Edgar, calls him—‘Our dear wild man.’  He spelled the name ‘L’ome sauvage.’  He was, in brief, a desperate, a soured, and a homeless outcast.  His chief French friends were ladies—Madame de Vassé, Madame de Talmond, and others.  Montesquieu, living in their society, and sending wine from his estate to the Jacobite Lord Elibank; rejoicing, too, in an Irish Jacobite housekeeper, ‘Mlle. Betti,’ was well disposed, like Voltaire, in an indifferent well-bred way.  Most of these people were, later, protecting and patronising the Prince when concealed from the view of Europe, but theirs was a vague and futile alliance.  Charles and his case were desperate.

In this mood, and in this situation at Avignon, he carried into practice the counsel which d’Argenson had elaborated in a written memoir.  ‘I gave them’ (Charles and Henry) ‘the best possible advice,’ says La Bête.  ‘My “Mémoire” I entrusted to O’Brien at Antwerp.  Therein I suggested that the two princes should never return to Italy, but that for some years they should lead a hidden and wandering life between France and Spain.  Charles might be given a pension and the vicariat of Navarre.  This should only be allowed to slip out by degrees, while England would grow accustomed to the notion that they were not in Rome, and would be reduced to mere doubts as to their place of residence.  Now they would be in Spain, now in France, finally in some town of Navarre, where their authority would, by slow degrees, be admitted.  Peace once firmly established, it would not be broken over this question.  They would be in a Huguenot country, and able to pass suddenly into Great Britain.’ [43]

This was d’Argenson’s advice before Henry fled Rome to be made a cardinal, and before the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, closing Europe against Charles, was concluded.  The object of d’Argenson is plain; he wished to keep Charles out of the Pope’s domains, as England wanted to drive the Prince into the centre of ‘Popery.’  If he resided in Rome, Protestant England would always suspect Charles; moreover, he would be remote from the scene of action.  To the Pope’s domains, therefore, Charles would not go.  But the scheme of skulking in France, Spain, and Navarre had ceased to be possible.  He, therefore, adopted ‘the fugitive and hidden life’ recommended by d’Argenson; he secretly withdrew from Avignon, and for many months his places of residence were unknown.

‘Charles,’ says Voltaire, ‘hid himself from the whole world.’  We propose to reveal his hiding-places.

CHAPTER III
THE PRINCE IN FAIRYLAND
FEBRUARY 1749-SEPTEMBER 1750—I.  WHAT THE WORLD SAID

At this moment the Polish crown was worn by Augustus of Saxony, who was reckoned ‘a bad life.’  The Polish throne, the Polish alliance, had been, after various unlucky adventures since the days of Henri III. and the Duc d’Alençon, practically abandoned by France.  But Louis XV. was beginning to contemplate that extraordinary intrigue in which Conti aimed at the crown of Poland, and the Comte de Broglie was employed (1752) to undermine and counteract the schemes of Louis’s official representatives. [46a]  As a Sobieski by his mother’s side, the son of the exiled James (who himself had years before been asked to stand as a candidate for the kingdom of Poland), Charles was expected by politicians to make for Warsaw when he fled from Avignon.  It is said, on the authority of a Polish manuscript, ‘communicated by Baron de Rondeau,’ that there was a conspiracy in Poland to unseat Augustus III. and give the crown to Prince Charles. [46b]  In 1719, Charles’s maternal grandfather had declined a Russian proposal to make a dash for the crown, so the chivalrous Wogan narrates.  In 1747 (June 6), Chambrier had reported to Frederick the Great that Cardinal Tencin was opposed to the ambition of the Saxon family, which desired to make the elective crown of Poland hereditary in its house.  The Cardinal said that, in his opinion, there was a Prince who would figure well in Poland, le jeune Edouard (Prince Charles), who had just made himself known, and in whom there was the stuff of a man. [46c]  But Frederick the Great declined to interfere in Polish matters, and Tencin was only trying to get rid of Charles without a rupture.  In May 1748, Frederick refused to see Graeme, a Jacobite who was sent to demand a refuge for the Prince in Prussia. [46d]  Without Frederick and without Sweden, Charles in 1749 could do nothing serious in Poland.

The distracted politics of Poland, however, naturally drew the attention of Europe to that country when Charles, on February 28, vanished out of Avignon ‘into fairyland,’ like Frederick after Molwitz.  Every Court in Europe was vainly searched for ‘the boy that cannot be found.’  The newsletters naturally sent him to Poland, so did Jacobite myth.

The purpose of this chapter is to record the guesses made by diplomatists at Charles’s movements, and the expedients by which they vainly endeavoured to discover him.  We shall next lift, as far as possible, the veil which has concealed for a century and a half adventures in themselves unimportant enough.  In spite of disappointments and dark hours of desertion, Charles, who was much of a boy, probably enjoyed the mystery which he now successfully created.  If he could not startle Europe by a brilliant appearance on any stage, he could keep it talking and guessing by a disappearance.  He obviously relished secrecy, pass-words, disguises, the ‘properties’ of the conspirator, in the spirit of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  He came of an evasive race.  His grandfather, as Duke of York, had fled from England disguised as a girl.  His father had worn many disguises in many adventures.  He had been ‘Betty Burke.’

Though it is certain that, in March 1749 (the only month when he almost evades us), Charles could not have visited Berlin, Livadia, Stockholm, the reader may care to be reminded of a contemporary Jacobite romance in which he is made to do all these things.  A glance should be cast on the pamphlet called ‘A Letter from H. G—g, Esq.’  (London, 1750).  The editor announces that the letter has been left in his lodgings by a mistake; it has not been claimed, as the person for whom it was meant has gone abroad, and so the editor feels free to gratify ‘the curiosity of the town.’  The piece, in truth, is a Jacobite tract, meant to keep up the spirits of the faithful, and it is probable that the author really had some information, though he is often either mistaken, or fables by way of a ‘blind.’  About February 11, says the scribe (nominally Henry Goring, Charles’s equerry, an ex-officer of the Queen of Hungary), a mysterious stranger, the ‘Chevalier de la Luze,’ came to Avignon, and was received by the Prince ‘with extraordinary marks of distinction.’  ‘He understood not one word of English,’ which destroys, if true, the theory that the Earl Marischal, or Marshal Keith, is intended.  French and Italian he spoke well, but with a foreign accent.  Kelly ventured to question the Prince about the stranger, but was rebuffed.  One day, probably February 24, the stranger received despatches, and vanished as he had come.  The Prince gave a supper (d’Argenson’s ‘ball’), and, when his guests had retired, summoned Goring into his study.  He told Goring that ‘there were spies about him’ (the Earl Marischal, we know, distrusted Kelly); he rallied him on a love-affair, and said that Goring only should be his confidant.  Next morning, very early, they two started for Lyons, disguised as French officers.  As far as Lyons, indeed, the French police actually traced them. [49a]  But, according to the pamphlet, they did not stop in Lyons; they rested at a small town two leagues further on, whence the Prince sent dispatches to Kelly at Avignon.  Engaging a new valet, Charles pushed to Strasbourg, where he again met La Luze, now described as ‘a person whose extraordinary talents had gained him the confidence one of the wisest Princes in Europe,’ obviously pointing to Frederick of Prussia, the master of Marshal Keith, and the friend and host of his brother, the Earl Marischal.  At Strasbourg, Charles rescued a pretty young lady from a fire; she lost her heart at once to the ‘Comte d’Espoir’ (his travelling title), but the Prince behaved like Scipio, not to mention a patriarch famous for his continence.  ‘I am no stoic,’ said His Royal Highness to La Luze, ‘but I have always been taught that pleasures, how pardonable soever in themselves, become highly criminal when indulged to the prejudice of another,’ adding many other noble and unimpeachable sentiments.

After a romantic adventure with English or Scottish assassins, in which His Royal Highness shot a few of them, the travellers arrived at Leipzig.  La Luze now assumed his real name, and carried Charles, by cross roads, to ‘a certain Court,’ where he spent ten days with much satisfaction.  He stayed at the house of La Luze (Berlin and the Earl Marischal appear to be hinted at, but the Marischal told Pickle that he had never seen Charles at Berlin), secret business was done, and then, through territories friendly or hostile, ‘a certain port’ was reached.  They sailed (from Dantzig?), were driven into a hostile port (Riga?), escaped and made another port (Stockholm?) where they met Lochgarry, ‘whom the Prince thought had been one of those that fell at Culloden.’

This is nonsense.  Lochgarry had been with Charles after Culloden, and had proposed to waylay Cumberland, which the Prince forbade.  Murray of Broughton, in his examination, and Bishop Forbes agree on this point, and James, we know, sent, by Edgar, a message to Lochgarry on Christmas Eve, 1748. [50a]  Charles, therefore, knew excellently well that Lochgarry did not die at Culloden.  After royal, but very secret entertainment ‘in this kingdom’ (Sweden?), Charles went into Lithuania, where old friends of his maternal ancestors, the Sobieskis, welcomed him.  He resumed a gaiety which he had lost ever since his arrest at the opera in Paris, and had ‘an interview with a most illustrious and firm friend to his person and interest.’  Though his marriage, says the pamphleteer, had been much talked of, ‘he has always declined making any applications of that nature himself.  It was his fixed determination to beget no royal beggars.’  D’Argenson reports Charles’s remark that he will never marry till the Restoration, and, no doubt, he was occasionally this mood, among others. [51a]  The pamphleteer vows that the Prince ‘loves and is loved,’ but will not marry ‘till his affairs take a more favourable turn.’  The lady is ‘of consummate beauty, yet is that beauty the least of her perfections.’

The pamphlet concludes with vague enigmatic hopes and promises, and certainly leaves its readers little wiser than they were before.  In the opinion of the Messrs. ‘Sobieski Stuart’ (who called themselves his grandsons), Charles really did visit Sweden, and his jewel, as Grand Master of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Stockholm, is still preserved there. [51b]  The castle where he resided in Lithuania, it is said, is that of Radzivil. [51c]  The affectionate and beautiful lady is the Princess Radzivil, to whom the newspapers were busy marrying Charles at this time.  The authors of ‘Tales of the Century,’ relying on some vague Polish traditions, think that a party was being made to raise the Prince to the Polish crown.  In fact, there is not a word of truth in ‘Henry Goring’s letter.’

We now study the perplexities of Courts and diplomatists.  Pickle was not yet at hand with accurate intelligence, and, even after he began to be employed, the English Government left their agents abroad to send in baffled surmises.  From Paris, on March 8, Colonel Joseph Yorke (whom d’Argenson calls by many ill names) wrote, ‘I am told for certain that he [the Prince] is now returned to Avignon.’ [52a]  Mann, in Florence, hears (March 7) that the Prince has sent a Mr. Lockhart to James to ask for money, but that was really done on December 31, 1748. [52b]  On March 11, Yorke learned from Puysieux that the Prince had been recognised by postboys as he drove through Lyons towards Metz; probably, Puysieux thought, on ‘an affair of gallantry.’  Others, says Yorke, ‘have sent him to Poland or Sweden,’ which, even in 1746, had been getting ready troops to assist Charles in Scotland. [52c]  On March 20, Yorke hints that Charles may be in or near Paris, as he probably was.  Berlin was suggested as his destination by Horace Mann (April 4).  Again, he has been seen in disguise, walking into a gate of Paris (April 11). [52d]  On April 14, Walton, from Florence, writes that James has had news of his son, is much excited, and is sending Fitzmorris to join him.  The Pope knows and is sure to blab. [52e]  On May 3, Yorke mentions a rumour, often revived, that the Prince is dead.  On May 9, the Jacobites in Paris show a letter from Oxford inviting Charles to the opening of the Radcliffe, ‘where they assure him of better reception than the University has had at Court lately.’ [53a]  Mann (May 2) mentions the Radzivil marriage, arranged, in a self-denying way, by the Princesse de Talmond.  On May 17, Yorke hears from Puysieux that the French ambassador in Saxony avers that Charles is in Poland, and that Sir Charles Williams has remonstrated with Count Brühl.  On May 1, 1749, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams wrote from Leipzig to the Duke of Newcastle.  He suspects that Charles is one of several persons who have just passed through Leipzig on the way to Poland; Count Brühl is ‘almost certain’ of it. [53b]  On May 5 (when Charles was really in or near Venice), Hanbury Williams sends a copy of his remonstrance with Brühl.

‘I asked Count Brühl whether, in the present divided and factious state of the nobility of Poland, His Polish Majesty would like to have a young adventurer (who can fish in no waters that are not troubled, and who, by his mother, is allied to a family that once sat upon the Polish throne) to go into that country where it would be natural for him to endeavour to encourage factions, nourish divisions, and foment confederations to the utmost of his power, and might not the evil-minded and indisposed Poles be glad to have such a tool in their hands, which at some time or other they might make use of to answer their own ends?  To this Count Brühl answered in such terms as I could wish, and I must do him the justice to say that he showed the best disposition to serve His Majesty in the affair in question; but I am yet of opinion that, whatever is done effectually in this case, must be done by the Court of Petersburg, and I would humbly advise that, as soon as it is known for certain that the Pretender’s son is in Poland, His Majesty should order his minister at the Court of Petersburg to take such steps as His Majesty’s great wisdom shall judge most likely to make the Czarina act with a proper vigour upon this occasion.

‘Your Grace knows that the republic of Poland is at present divided into two great factions, the one which is in the interest of Russia, to which the friends of the House of Austria attach themselves; the other is in the interest of France and Prussia.  As I thought it most likely, if the Pretender’s son went into Poland, he would seek protection from the French party, I have desired and requested the French ambassador that he would write to the French resident at Warsaw, and to others of his friends in Poland, that he might be informed of the truth of the Pretender’s arrival, and the place that he was at in Poland, as soon as possible, and that when he was acquainted with it he would let me know what came to his knowledge, all which he has sincerely promised me to do, and I do not doubt but he will keep his word. . . .  It is publicly said that the Pretender’s son’s journey to Poland is with a design to marry a princess of the House of Radzivil.

‘As soon as I hear anything certain about the Pretender’s son being in Poland, I will most humbly offer to your Grace the method that I think will be necessary for His Majesty to pursue with respect to the King and republic of Poland, in case His Majesty should think fit not to suffer the Pretender’s son to remain in that country.

‘C. Hanbury Williams.’

On May 12, Williams believes that Charles is not in Poland.  On May 18, he guesses (wrongly) that the Prince is in Paris.  On May 25, he fancies—‘plainly perceives’—that the French ambassador at Dresden believes in the Polish theory.  On June 9, Brühl tells Williams (correctly) that Charles is in Venice.  On June 11, Hanbury Williams proposes to have a harmless priest seized and robbed, and to kidnap Prince Charles!  I give this example of British diplomatic energy and chivalrous behaviour.

From Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.

‘Dresden: June 11, N.S. 1749.

‘ . . . Count Brühl has communicated to me the letters which he received by the last post from the Saxon resident at Venice, who says that the Pretender’s son had been at Venice for some days; that he has received two expresses from his father at Rome since his being there; but that nobody knew how long he intended to stay there. . .  Mons. Brühl further informs me that he hears from Poland that the Prince of Radzivil, who is Great General of Lithuania, has a strong desire to marry his daughter to the Pretender’s son.  The young lady is between eleven and twelve years old, very plain, and can be no great fortune, for she has two brothers; but yet Mons. Brühl is of opinion that there is some negotiation on foot for this marriage, which is managed by an Italian priest who is a titular bishop, whose name is Lascarisk (sic), and who lives in and governs the Prince Radzivil’s family.  This priest is soon to set out for Italy, under pretence of going to Rome for the Jubilee year, but Mons. Brühl verily thinks that he is charged with a secret commission for negotiating the above-mentioned marriage.  If His Majesty thinks it worth while to have this priest watched, I will answer for having early intelligence of the time he intends beginning his journey, and then it would be no difficult matter to have him stopped, and his papers taken from him, as he goes through the Austrian territories into Italy.  The more I think of it the more I am persuaded that the Pretender’s son will not go into Poland for many reasons, especially for one, which is that for a small sum of money I will undertake to find a Pole who will engage to seize upon his person in any part of Poland, and carry him to any port in the north that His Majesty shall appoint.  I have had offers of this sort already made me, to which your Grace may be sure I gave no answer, except thanking the persons for the zeal they showed for the King, my master, but I am convinced that the thing is very practicable.

‘I had this day the honour to dine with the King of Poland, and, as I sat next to him at table, he told me that he was very glad to hear that the Pretender’s son was at length found to be at Venice, for that he would much rather have him there than in Poland; to which I answered that I was very glad, upon His Polish Majesty’s account, that the Pretender’s son had not thought fit to come into any of His Majesty’s territories, since I believed the visit would be far from being agreeable.  To which the King of Poland replied that it would be a very disagreeable visit to him, and after that expressed himself in the handsomest manner imaginable with respect to His Majesty, and the regard he had for his Sacred person and Royal House; and I am convinced if the Pretender’s son had gone into Poland, His Polish Majesty and his minister would have done everything in their power to have drove him out of that kingdom as soon as possible.

‘C. Hanbury Williams.

‘P.S.—Since my writing this letter, Count Brühl tells me that the news of the Pretender’s son’s being at Venice is confirmed by letters from his best correspondent at Rome, but both accounts agree in the Pretender’s son’s being at Venice incognito, and that he appears in no public place, so that very few people know of his being there. . . .  C. H. W.’

In 1751, Hanbury Williams renewed his proposal about waylaying Lascaris.

Charles, as we shall see, was for a short time at Venice in May 1749.  Meanwhile the game of hide and seek through Europe went on as merrily as ever.  Lord Hyndford, so well known to readers of Mr. Carlyle’s ‘Frederick,’ now opens in full cry from Moscow, but really on a hopelessly wrong scent.  As illustrating Hyndford’s opinion of Frederick, who had invested him with the Order of the Thistle, we quote this worthy diplomatist:

Lord Hyndford to the Duke of Newcastle. [58a]

‘Moscow: June 19, 1749.

‘ . . . I must acquaint your Grace of what I have learnt, through a private canal, from the last relation of Mr. Gross, the Russian minister at Berlin, although I dare say it is no news to your Grace.  Mr. Gross writes that, some days before the date of his letter, the Pretender’s eldest son arrived at Potsdam, and had been very well received by the King of Prussia, General Keith, and his brother, the late Earl Marshal; and all the other English, Scotch, and Irish Jacobites in the Prussian service were to wait upon him.  This does not at all surprise me; but Mons. Valony, the French minister, went likewise to make his compliments at a country house, hired on purpose for this young vagabond.  This is all that I know as yet of this affair in general, for the Chancellor has not thought proper as yet to inform me of the particulars.  However, this public, incontestable proof of the little friendship and regard the King of Prussia has for His Majesty and His Royal Family, and for the whole British nation, will, I hope, open the eyes of the people who are blind to that Prince’s monstrous faults, if any such are still left amongst us, and I doubt not but it will save His Majesty the trouble of sending Sir C. Hanbury Williams or any other minister to that perfidious Court.

‘Hyndford.’

This was all a mare’s nest; but Hyndford is for kidnapping the Prince.  He writes:

‘Moscow: June 26, 1749.

‘My Lord,—Since the 19th inst., which was the date of my last letter to your Grace, I have been with the Chancellor, who made his excuses that he had not sooner communicated to me the intelligence which Mr. Gross, the Russian minister at Berlin, had sent him concerning the Pretender’s eldest son.  The Chancellor confirmed all that I wrote to your Grace on the 19th upon that subject, and he told me that he had received a second letter from Mr. Gross, wherein that minister says that the Young Pretender had left the country house where he was, in the neighbourhood of Berlin, and had entirely disappeared, without its being hitherto possible for him, Mr. Gross, or Count Choteck, the Austrian minister, to find out the route he has taken, although it is generally believed that he is gone into Poland; and that now the King of Prussia and his ministers deny that ever the Pretender’s son was there, and take it mightily amiss of anybody that pretends to affirm it.  I am sorry that the Russian troops are not now in Poland, for otherwise I believe it would have been an easy matter to prevail upon this Court to catch this young knight errant and to send him to Siberia, where he would not have been any more heard of; and if the Court of Dresden will enter heartily into such a scheme, it will not be impossible yet to apprehend him, and as it is very probable that the King of Prussia has sent him into Poland to make a party and breed confusion, it appears to be King Augustus’s interest to secure him.

‘Hyndford.’

Many months later, on Feb. 2, 1749–1750, Lord Hyndford, writing from Hanover, retracted.  The rumour of Charles’s presence at Berlin, he found, was started by Count de Choteck, the Austrian ambassador.  In fact, Choteck used to meet a fair lady secretly in a garden near Berlin, and near the house of Field-Marshal Keith and his brother, Lord Marischal.  Hard by was an inn, where a stranger lodged, a rich and handsome youth, whom Choteck, meeting, took for Prince Charles.  He was really a young Polish gentleman, into whose reasons for retirement we need not examine.

Frederick, in his mischievous way, wrote about all this from Potsdam, on June 24, 1749:

‘We have played a trick on Choteck; he spends much on spies, and, to prove that he is well served, he has taken it into his head that young Edouard, really at Venice, is at Berlin.  He has been very busy over this, and no doubt has informed his Court.’

On July 7, 1749, Frederick, in a letter to his minister at Moscow, said that only dense ignorance could credit the Berlin legend. [61]

These documents certainly demonstrate that the Prince fluttered the Courts, and that the Jacobite belief in English schemes to kidnap or murder him was not a mere mythical delusion.  Only an opportunity was wanted.  He had spared the Duke of Cumberland’s life, even after the horrors of Culloden.  But Hanbury Williams knows a Pole who will waylay him; Hyndford wants to carry him off to Siberia.  It was not once only, on the other hand, but twice at least, that Charles protected the Butcher, Cumberland.  In 1746 he saved his enemy from Lochgarry’s open attempt.  In 1747 (May 4), a certain Father Myles Macdonnell wrote from St. Germain to James in Rome.  He dwells on the jealousies among the Jacobites, and particularly denounces Kelly, then a trusted intimate of Charles.  Kelly, he says, is a drunkard, and worse!  It was probably he who raised ‘a scruple’ against a scheme relating to ‘Cumberland’s hateful person.’  ‘Honest warrantable people from London’ came to Paris and offered ‘without either fee or reward’ to do the business.  What was the ‘business,’ what measures were to be taken against ‘Cumberland’s hateful person’?  Father Myles Macdonnell, writing to James, a Catholic priest to a Catholic King, does not speak of assassination.  He talks of ‘the scruple raised against securing Cumberland’s person.’  ‘I suspect Parson Kelly of making a scruple of an action the most meritorious that could possibly be committed,’ writes Father Myles. [62a]  The talk of kidnapping, in such cases as those of Cumberland and Prince Charles—men of spirit and armed—is a mere blind.  Murder is meant!  Father Myles’s letter proves that (unknown to James in Rome) there was a London conspiracy to kill the Butcher, but Prince Charles again rejected the proposal.  He was less ungenerous than Hyndford and Hanbury Williams.  The amusing thing is that the English Government knew, quite as well as Father Macdonnell or James, all about the conspiracy to slay the Duke of Cumberland.  Here is the information, which reached Mann through Rome. [62b]

From Mr. Thomas Chamberlayne to Sir H. Mann.

‘Capranica: November 18, 1747.

‘ . . . The family at Rome . . . was informed, by one who arrived there last October from London, that there are twelve persons, whose names I could not learn, but none of distinction, that are formed in a club or society, and meet at the Nag’s Head in East Street, Holborn.  They have bound themselves under most solemn oaths that this winter they will post themselves in different parts of the City of London mostly frequented by His Royal Highness, the Duke of Cumberland, in his night visits [to whom?], and are resolved to lay violent hands on his royal person.  The parole among the different parties in their respective posts is The Bloody Butcher.  They are all resolute fellows, who first declared at their entering in this conspiracy to despise death or torture.  This motive is worthy of your care, so I am certain you’ll make proper use of it . . .

‘Thomas Chamberlayne.’

If Charles afterwards attempted to repay in kind the attentions of his royal cousins, or of their ministers, this can hardly be reckoned inhuman.  If he was fluttering the Courts, they—Prussia, Russia, France, Poland—were leading him the life of a tracked beast.  They were determined to drive him into the Papal domains; even in Venice he was harried by spies. [63]  On May 30, to retrace our steps, Mann, from Florence, reports that Charles has arrived at the Papal Nuncio’s in Venice, attended by one servant in the livery of the Duke of Modena.  Walton adds that he has not a penny (June 6).  Walton (July 11) writes from Florence that the Prince is reported from Venice to have paid assiduous court to the second daughter of the Duke of Modena, a needy potentate, but that he suddenly disappeared.’ [64]  On Sept. 5, 1749, Walton says he is in France.  On Sept. 26, Walton writes that he is offering his sword to the Czarina, who declines.  He is at Lübeck, or (Oct. 3) at Avignon.  On Oct. 20, Mann writes that, from Lübeck, Charles has asked the Imperial ambassador at Paris to implore the Kaiser to give him an asylum in his States.  On Oct. 31, Mann only knows that the Pope and James ‘reciprocally ask each other news about’ the Prince.  On Jan. 23, 1750, poor Mann is ‘quite at a loss.’  James receives letters from the Prince, but never with date of place, otherwise Mann would have been better informed.  Walton hears that James believes Charles to be imprisoned in a French fortress.  From Paris, Jan. 17, 1750, Albemarle wrote that he heard the Prince was in Berlin.  The Prince later told Pickle that he had been in Berlin more than once, and, as we shall see, Frederick amused him with hopes of assistance.  Kelly has left Charles’s followers in distress at Avignon.  Kelly, in fact, received his congé; he was distrusted by the Earl Marischal, and Carte, the historian.  On Jan. 28, Albemarle hears that Charles has been in Paris ‘under the habit of a Capuchine Fryar,’ and this was a disguise of his, according to Pickle.

Meanwhile the French Government kept protesting their total ignorance.  On April 3, 1750, Walton announces that James has had a long letter from Charles containing his plans and those of his adherents, for which he demands the Royal approval.  James has sent a long letter to Charles by the courier of the Duc de Nivernais, the French ambassador in Rome.  By the middle of June, James is reported by Walton to be full of hope, and to have heard excellent news.  But these expectations were partly founded on a real scheme of Charles, partly on a strike of colliers at Newcastle.  A mob orator there proclaimed the Prince, and the Jacobites in Rome thought that His Royal Highness was heading the strike! [65a]  In July, the same illusions were entertained.  On August 12, Albemarle, from Paris, reports the Prince to be dangerously ill, probably not far from the French capital.  He was really preparing to embark for England.  Albemarle, by way of trap, circulated in the English press a forged news-letter from Nancy in Lorraine, dated August 24, 1750.  It announced Charles’s death of pneumonia, in hopes of drawing forth a Jacobite denial.  This stratagem failed.  On August 4, James, though piqued by being kept in the dark, sent Charles a fresh commission of regency. [65b]  Of the Prince’s English expedition of September 1750, the Government of George II. knew nothing.  Pickle was in Rome at the moment, not with Charles; what Pickle knew the English ministers knew, but there is a difficulty in dating his letters before 1752, and I am not aware that any despatches of his from Rome are extant.

We have now brought the history to a point (September 1750) where the Prince, for a moment, emerges from fairyland, and where we are not left to the perplexing conjectures of diplomatists in Paris, Dresden, Florence, Hanover, and St. Petersburg.  In September 1750, Charles certainly visited London.  There is a point of light.  We now give an account of his actual movements in 1749–1750.

CHAPTER IV
THE PRINCE IN FAIRYLAND. II.—WHAT ACTUALLY OCCURRED

The reader has had an opportunity of observing the success of Charles in mystifying Europe.  Diplomatists, ambassadors, and wits would have been surprised, indeed, had they known that one of the most famous men of the age possessed the secret for which they were seeking.  The author of ‘L’Esprit des Lois’ could have enlightened them, for Charles’s mystery was no mystery to Montesquieu, who was friendly with Scottish and English Jacobites.  The French Ministers, truly or falsely, always professed entire ignorance.  They promised to arrest the Prince wherever he might be found on French soil, and transport him to sea by Civita Vecchia. [68]  It will be shown later that, at least in the autumn of 1749, this ignorance was probably feigned.

What is really known of the movements of the Prince in 1749?  Curiously enough, Mr. Ewald does not seem to have consulted the ‘Stuart Papers’ at Windsor, while the extracts in Browne’s ‘History of the Highland Clans’ are meagre.  To these papers then we turn for information.  The most useful portions are not Charles’s letters to James.  These are brief and scanty.  Thus he writes from Avignon (January 15, 1749), ‘We are enjoying here the finest weather ever was seen.’  He always remarks that his health ‘is perfect.’  He orders patterns for his servants’ liveries and a button, blue and yellow, still remains in a letter from Edgar!  The button outlasts the dynasty.  Our intelligence must be extracted from ill-spelled, closely scrawled, and much erased sheets of brown paper, on which Charles has scribbled drafts for letters to his household, to Waters, his banker in Paris, to adherents in Paris or London, and to ladies.  The notes are almost, and in places are quite, illegible.  The Prince practised a disguised hand, and used pseudonyms instead of names.  Many letters have been written in sympathetic ink, and then exposed to fire or the action of acids.  However, something can be made out, but not why he concealed his movements even from his banker, even from his household, Oxburgh, Kelly, Harrington, and Graeme.  It is certain that he started, with a marriage in his eye, from Avignon on February 28, 1749, accompanied by Henry Goring, of the Austrian service.  There had already been a correspondence, vaguely hinted at by James’s secretary, Edgar, between Charles and the Duke and a Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt.  On February 24, 1749, Charles drafted, at Avignon, a proposal for the hand of the Duke’s daughter.  He also drafted (undated) a request to the King of Poland for leave to bring his wife, the Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, into Polish territory. [69]  We may imagine His Polish Majesty’s answer.  Of course, the marriage did not take place.

Charles had other secrets.  On February 3, 1749, he wrote to Waters about the care to be taken with certain letters.  These were a correspondence with ‘Thomas Newton,’ (Major Kennedy), at Mr. Alexander Macarty’s, in Gray’s Inn, London.  Newton was in relations with Cluny Macpherson, through a friend in Northumberland.  Cluny, skulking on his Highland estates, was transmitting or was desired to transmit a part of the treasure of 40,000 louis d’or, buried soon after Culloden at the head of Loch Arkaig. [70a]  Of this fatal treasure we shall hear much.  A percentage of the coin was found to be false money, a very characteristic circumstance.  Moreover, Cluny seems to have held out hopes, always deferred, of a rising in the Highlands.  Charles had to be ready in secrecy, to put himself at the head of this movement.  There was also to be an English movement, which was frowned on by official Jacobitism.  On February 3, 1749, Charles writes from Avignon to ‘Thomas Newton’ (Kennedy) about the money sent south by Cluny.  He repeated his remarks on March 6, giving no place of residence.  But probably he was approaching Paris, dangerous as such a visit was, for in a note of March 6 to Waters, he says that he will ‘soon call for letters.’ [70b]  His noms de guerre at this time were ‘Williams’ and ‘Benn’; later he chose ‘John Douglas.’  He was also Smith, Mildmay, Burton, and so forth.

There should have been no difficulty in discovering Charles.  Modern police, in search of a person who is ‘wanted,’ spy on his mistress.  Now the Princesse de Talmond, when out of favour at Versailles, went to certain lands in Lorraine, near her exiled king, Stanislas.  In Lorraine, therefore, at Lunéville, the Court of the ex-king of Poland, or at Commercy, Bar-le-Duc, or wherever the Princesse de Talmond might be, Charles was sure to be heard of by an intelligent spy, if permitted to enter the country.  Consequently, we are not surprised to find Charles drafting on April 3, at Lunéville (where he resided at the house of one Mittie, physician of the ex-king of Poland), a ‘Project for My arrival in Paris.  Mr. Benn [himself] must go straight to Dijon, and his companion, Mr. Smith [Goring], to Paris.  Mr. Smith will need a chaise, which he must buy at Lunéville.  Next he will take up the servant of C. P. [Prince Charles] at Ligny, but on leaving that place Mr. Smith must ride on horseback, and the chaise can go there as if for his return to Paris; the person in it seeming to profit by this opportunity.  Mr. Benn [the Prince] must remain for some days, as if he wanted to buy a trunk, and will give his own as if in friendship to Mr. Smith; all this seeming mere chance work.  Next, Mr. Smith will go his way and his friend will go his, after waiting a few days, and on arriving at Dijon must write to nobody, except the letter to W— [Waters].  The Chevalier Graeme, whom he must see (and to whom he may mention having been at Dijon on the Prince’s business, without naming his companion, but as if alone), knows nothing, and Graeme must be left in the dark as if he (Mr. Smith) [Goring] were in the same case, and were waiting new orders in total ignorance, not having seen me for a long time.’ [71]

There follow a few private addresses in Paris; and the name, to be remarked, of ‘Mademoiselle Ferrand.’

All this is very puzzling; we only make out that, by some confusion of the personalities of ‘Benn’ (the Prince) and ‘Mr. Smith’ (Goring), Charles hoped to enter Paris undetected.  Yet he was seen ‘entering a gate of Paris in disguise.’  Doubtless he had lady allies, but a certain Mademoiselle Ferrand, to whom he wrote, he seems not to have known personally.  We shall find that she was later of use to him, and indeed his most valuable friend and ally.

Next, we find this letter of April 10 to Madame Henrietta Drummond, doubtless of the family of Macgregor, called Drummond, of Balhaldie.  Charles appears to have had enough of Paris, and is going to Venice.  He is anxious to meet the Earl Marischal.

‘April 10, 1749.

‘I have been very impatient to be able to give you nuse of me as I am fully persuaded of yr Friendship, and concern for everything that regards me; I send you here enclosed a Letter for Ld Marishal, be pleased to enclose it, and forward it without loss of time; the Bearer (he is neither known by you or me), is charged to receive at any time what Letters you want to send me, and you may be shure of their arriving safe.  Iff Lord Marishal agrees with my Desier when you give his Packet to yr Bearer, you must put over it en Dilligence, iff otherwise, direct by my Name as I sign it here.  I flatter myself of the Continuation of your Friendship, as I hope you will never doubt of mine which shall be constant.  I remain yr moste obedient humble Servant

‘John Douglas.

‘P.S.—Tell ye Bearer when to comback for the answer of ye enclosed or any other Letters you want to send me.

‘P.S. to Lord Marischal.—Whatever party you take, be pleased to keep my writing secret, and address to me at Venise to the Sig. Ignazio Testori to Mr. de Villelongue under cover to a Banquier of that town, and it will come safe to me.

‘To Md. Henrietta Drummond.’

Charles, on April 20, wrote another letter to the Lord Marischal, imploring for an interview, at some place to be fixed.  But the old Lord was not likely to go from Berlin to Venice, whither Charles was hastening.

It is perfectly plain that, leaving Avignon on February 28, Charles was making for Paris on March 6 by a circuitous route through Lorraine (where he doubtless met Madame de Talmond), and a double back on Burgundy.  What he did or desired in Paris we do not know.  He is said to have visited Lally Tollendal, and he must have seen Waters, his banker.  By April 10 he is starting for Venice, where he had, as a boy, been royally received.  But, in 1744, the Republic of Venice had resumed relations with England, interrupted by Charles’s too kind reception in 1737.  The whole romance, therefore, of Henry Goring’s letter, and all the voyages to Stockholm, Berlin, Lithuania, and so forth, are visions.  Charles probably saw some friends in Paris, was tolerated in Lorraine (where his father was protected before 1715), and he vainly looked for a home in any secular State of Europe.  This was all, or nearly all, that occurred between March and May 1749.  Europe was fluttered, secret service money was poured out like water, diplomatists caballed and scribbled despatches, all for very little.  The best place to have hunted for Charles was really at Lunéville, near the gay Court of his kinsman, the Duke Stanislas Leczinski, the father of the Queen of France.  There Charles’s sometime admirer, Voltaire, was a welcome guest; thither too (as we saw) went his elderly cousin, people said his mistress, the Princesse de Talmond.  But the English diplomatists appear to have neglected Lunéville.  D’Argenson was better informed.

On April 26 Charles was at Strasbourg.  Here, D’Argenson says, he was seen, and warned to go, by an écuyer of the late Cardinal Rohan.  Hence he wrote again to the Earl Marischal at Berlin.  From this note it is plain that he had sent Goring (‘Mr. Smith’) to the Earl; Goring, indeed, had carried his letters of April 10–20.  He again proposes a meeting with the Earl Marischal at Venice.  He will ‘answer for the expenses,’ and apologises for ‘such a long and fatiguing journey.’  He wrote to Waters, ‘You may let Mr. Newton know that whenever he has thoroly finished his Business, Mr. Williams [the Prince] will make him very wellcum in all his Cuntrihouses.’

The ‘business’ of ‘Mr. Newton’ was to collect remittances from Cluny.

On April 30, the Prince, as ‘Mr. Williams,’ expresses ‘his surprise and impatience for the delay of the horses [money] and other goods promised by Mr. Newton.’

On May 3, Charles wrote, without address, to Goring, ‘I go strete to Venice, and would willingly avoid your Garrison Towns, as much as possible: id est, of France.  I believe to compass that by goin by Ruffach to Pfirt: there to wate for me.  The Chese [chaise] you may either leve it in consine to your post-master of Belfort, or, what is still better, to give it to the bearer.’

Goring and Harrington were to meet the bearer at Belfort, but Harrington seems to have been mystified, and to have failed in effecting a junction.  The poor gentleman, we learn, from letters of Stafford and Sheridan, Charles’s retainers at Avignon, could scarcely raise money to leave that town.  Sir James Harrington was next to meet Charles at Venice.  He was to carry a letter for Charles to a Venetian banker.  ‘Nota bene, that same banquier, though he will deliver to me your letter, knows nothing about me, nor who I am. . . .  Change your name, and, in fine, keep as private as possible, till I tell you what is to be done.’  Harrington failed, and lay for months in pawn at Venice, pouring out his griefs in letters to Goring.  He was a lachrymose conspirator.

These weary affairs are complicated by mysterious letters to ladies: for example to Mademoiselle Lalasse, ‘Je vous prie, Mademoiselle, de rendre justice à mon inviolable attachement . . .’  (May 3).  He gives her examples of his natural and of his disguised handwriting; probably she helped him in forwarding his correspondence.  Charles’s chief anxiety was to secure the Lord Marischal.  Bulkeley and the official English Jacobites kept insisting that he should have a man with him who was trusted by the party.  Kelly was distrusted, though Bulkeley defends him, and was cashiered in autumn.  Charles’s friends also kept urging that he must ‘appear in public,’ but where?  Bulkeley suggested Bologna.  The Earl Marischal, later (July 5), was for Fribourg.  No place was really both convenient and possible.  On May 17 Charles wrote from Venice to the Earl Marischal, ‘I am just arrived, but will not be able for some days, to know what reception to meet with.’  He fears he ‘may be chased from hence,’ and his fears were justified.  On the same day (May 17) he wrote to Edgar in Rome, ‘Venice, next to France, is the best for my interest, and the only one in Italy.’

Venice ejected the Prince.  On May 26 he wrote to his father:

‘Sir,—I received last night from ye Nuntio a definitive answer about my project, which is quite contrary to my expectation; as I have nothing further to do here, and would not run the least risk of being found out, I depart this very evening, having left a direction to the said Nuntio how to forward my letters for me.’  On the same day he wrote to Chioseul de Stainville, the minister at Versailles of the Empress, ‘Could an anonymous exiled Prince be received by the Kaiser and the Queen of Hungary?  He would remain incognito.’

On June 3 Charles wrote to James, without address or news, and to Bulkeley.  ‘Now my friend must skulk to the perfect dishonour and glory of his worthy relations, until he finds a reception fitting at home or abroad.’  On the back of the draft he writes:

‘What can a bird do that has not found a right nest?  He must flit from bough to bough—ainsi use les Irondel.’

Probably Charles, after a visit, perhaps, to Ferrara, returned to Paris and his Princess.  We find a draft thus conceived and spelled:

‘Arrengement.

‘Goring to come here immediately, he to know nothing but that I am just arrived.  I am not to go to Paris, but at the end of the month, as sooner no answer can be had, moreover perhaps obliged to wait another, which would oblige me to remain to long in P.’  He also (June 3) wrote to Montesquieu, from whom (I think) there is an unsigned friendly letter.  He sent compliments to the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, a lady much attached to Montesquieu.  An unsigned English letter (June 5) advised him to appear publicly.  People are coming to inquire into reports about his character, ‘after which it is possible some proposals may be made to you.’  The writer will say more when ‘in a safer place.’

Newton (Kennedy), meanwhile, had been imprisoned and examined in London, but had been released, and was at Paris.  He bought for the Prince ‘a fine case of double barrill pistols, made by Barber,’ and much admired ‘on this side.’  Charles expresses gratitude for the gift.  Newton had been examined by the Duke of Newcastle about the 40,000 louis d’or buried at Loch Arkaig in 1740, but had given no information.  On June 26 Charles again asks Bulkeley, ‘What can a bird do that has found no right nest?’

On June 30 the Prince was probably in Paris, whither we have seen that he meant to go.  He had ‘found a right nest,’ and a very curious nest he had found.  The secret of the Prince’s retreat became known, many years later, to Grimm, the Paris correspondent of Catherine the Great.  Charles’s biographers have overlooked or distrusted Grimm’s gossip, but it is confirmed by Charles’s accidentally writing two real names, in place of pseudonyms, in his correspondence.  The history of his ‘nest’ was this.  After her reign as favourite of Louis XIV., Madame de Montespan founded a convent of St. Joseph, in the Rue St. Dominique, in the Faubourg St. Germain.  Attached to the convent were rooms in which ladies of rank might make a retreat, or practically occupy chambers. [79]

About this convent and its inmates, Grimm writes as follows:

‘The unfortunate Prince Charles, after leaving the Bastille [really Vincennes] lay hidden for three years in Paris, in the rooms of Madame de Vassé, who then resided with her friend, the celebrated Mademoiselle Ferrand, at the convent of St. Joseph.  To Mademoiselle de Ferrand the Abbé Condillac owed the ingenious idea of the statue, which he has developed so well in his treatise on “The Sensations.”  The Princesse de Talmond, with whom Prince Charles was always much in love, inhabited the same house.  All day he was shut up in a little garderobe of Madame de Vassé’s, whence, by a secret staircase, he made his way at night to the chambers of the Princesse.  In the evening he lurked behind an alcove in the rooms of Mademoiselle Ferrand.  Thus, unseen and unknown, he enjoyed every day the conversation of the most distinguished society, and heard much good and much evil spoken of himself.

‘The existence of the Prince in this retreat, and the profound mystery which so long hid him from the knowledge of the world, by a secret which three women shared, and in a house where the flower of the city and the Court used to meet, seems almost miraculous.  M. de Choiseul, who heard the story several years after the departure of the Prince, could not believe it.  When Minister of Foreign Affairs he wrote to Madame de Vassé and asked her for the particulars of the adventure.  She told him all, and did not conceal the fact that she had been obliged to get rid of the Prince, because of the too lively scenes between him and Madame de Talmond.  They began in tender effusions, and often ended in a quarrel, or even in blows.  This fact we learn from an intimate friend of Madame de Vassé.’ [80]

There is exaggeration here.  The Prince was not living a life ‘fugitive and cloistered’ for three whole unbroken years.  But the convent of St. Joseph was one of his hiding-places from 1749 to 1752.  Of Madame de Vassé I have been unable to learn much: a lady of that name was presented at Court in 1745, and the Duc de Luynes describes her as ‘conveniently handsome.’  She is always alluded to as ‘La Grandemain’ in Charles’s correspondence, but once he lets her real name slip out in a memorandum.  Mademoiselle Ferrand’s father is apparently described by d’Hozier as ‘Ferrand, Ecuyer, Sieur des Marres et de Ronville en Normandie.’  Many of Charles’s letters are addressed to ‘Mademoiselle Luci,’ sister of ‘La Grandemain.’  Now Madame de Vassé seems, from a passage in the Duc de Luynes’s ‘Mémoires,’ to have been the only daughter of her father, M. de Pezé.  But once, Charles, writing to ‘Mademoiselle Luci,’ addresses the letter to ‘Mademoiselle La Marre,’ for ‘Marres.’  Now, as Marres was an estate of the Ferrands, this address seems to identify ‘Mademoiselle Luci’ with Mademoiselle Ferrand, the intimate friend, not really the sister, of Madame de Vassé.  Mademoiselle Ferrand, as Grimm shows, had a taste for philosophy.  We shall remark the same taste in the Prince’s friend, ‘Mademoiselle Luci.’

Thus the secret which puzzled Europe is revealed.  The Prince, sought vainly in Poland, Prussia, Italy, Silesia, and Staffordshire, was really lurking in a fashionable Parisian convent.  Better had he been ‘where the wind blows over seven glens, and seven Bens, and seven mountain moors,’ like the Prince in the Gaelic fairy stories.

We return to details.  On June 30, 1749, the Prince, still homeless, writes a curious letter to Mademoiselle Ferrand:

‘The confidence, Mademoiselle, which I propose to place in you may seem singular, as I have not the good fortune to know you.  The Comtesse de Routh, however, will be less surprised.’  This lady was the wife of an Irishman commanding a regiment in the French service, one of those stationed on the frontier of Flanders.  ‘You [Mademoiselle Ferrand], who have made a Relation de Cartouche [the famous robber], may consent to be the depositary of my letter.  I pray you to give this letter to the Comtesse de Routh, and to receive from her all the packets addressed to Monsieur Douglas.’  He then requests Madame de Routh not to let the Waterses know that she is the intermediary.

The reason for all this secrecy is obvious.  D’Argenson (not the Bête, but his brother) had threatened Waters with the loss of his head if he would not tell where the Prince was concealed [82].  The banker did not want to know the dangerous fact, and was able to deny his knowledge with a clear conscience.

On July 23 Charles again wrote to Mademoiselle Ferrand: ‘It is very bold of Cartouche to write once more, without knowing whether you wish to be concerned with him, but people of our profession are usually impudent, indeed we must be, if we are to earn our bread. . . .  I pray you to have some confidence in this handwriting, and to believe that Cartouche, though he be Cartouche, is a true friend.  As for his smuggling business, even if it does not succeed as he hopes, he will be none the less grateful to all who carry his flag, as he will be certain that, if he fails, it is because success is impossible.’ [83]

This letter was likely to please a romantic girl, as we may suppose Mademoiselle Ferrand to have been, despite her philosophy.

Stafford and Sheridan now kept writing pitiful appeals for money from Avignon.  Charles answers (July 31, 1749):

‘I wish I were in a situation at present to relive them I estime, in an exotick cuntry that desiers nothing else but to exercise their arbitrary power in distressing all honest men, even them that [are] most allies to their own Soverain.’