Madame la Dauphine and Madame la Duchesse de Berri complimented
the young bride with royal favours. Her portrait by Dubufe was in the
Exhibition next year, a charming young duchess indeed, with black eyes,
and black ringlets, pearls on her neck, and diamonds in her hair, as
beautiful as a princess of a fairy tale. M. d'Ivry, whose early life may
have been rather oragious, was yet a gentleman perfectly well conserved.
Resolute against fate his enemy (one would fancy fate was of an
aristocratic turn, and took especial delight in combats with princely
houses; the Atridae, the Borbonidae, the Ivrys,--the Browns and Joneses
being of no account), the prince seemed to be determined not only to
secure a progeny, but to defy age. At sixty he was still young, or seemed
to be so. His hair was as black as the princess's own, his teeth as
white. If you saw him on the Boulevard de Gand, sunning among the
youthful exquisites there, or riding au Bois, with a grace worthy of old
Franconi himself, you would take him for one of the young men, of whom
indeed up to his marriage he retained a number of the graceful follies
and amusements, though his manners had a dignity acquired in old days of
Versailles and the Trianon, which the moderns cannot hope to imitate.
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