CHAPTER XIII
1844
Queen Victoria to the King of the Belgians.
My Dearest Uncle,— I had the pleasure of receiving your kind letter of the 4th, which is written from Ardenne, where I grieve to see you are again gone without my beloved Louise.
Charlotte is the admiration of every one, and I wish much I could have seen the three dear children en représentation.
Our fat Vic or Pussette learns a verse of Lamartine by heart, which ends with "le tableau se déroule à mes pieds"; to show how well she had understood this difficult line which Mdlle Charier had explained to her, I must tell you the following bon mot. When she was riding on her pony, and looking at the cows and sheep, she turned to Mdlle Charier and said: "Voilà le tableau qui se déroule à mes pieds." Is not this extraordinary for a little child of three years old? It is more like what a person of twenty would say. You have no notion what a knowing, and I am sorry to say sly, little rogue she is, and so obstinate. She and le petit Frère accompany us to dear old Claremont to-day; Alice remains here under Lady Lyttelton's care. How sorry I am that you should have hurt your leg, and in such a provoking way; Albert says he remembers well your playing often with a pen-knife when you talked, and I remember it also, but it is really dangerous.
I am happy that the news from Paris are good; the really good understanding between our two Governments provokes the Carlists and Anarchists. Bordeaux[1] is not yet gone; I saw in a letter that it was debated in his presence whether he was on any favourable occasion de se présenter en France!
- ↑ The Duc de Bordeaux, only son of the Duc de Berri, had by the death of Charles X. and the renunciation of all claims to the French Throne on the part of the Duc d'Angoulême, become the representative of the elder branch of the Bourbons. He had intended his visit to England to have a private character only.
3
