The
end every one knows. He was condemned to be shot and degraded. The first
part of the sentence was cancelled on account of his former services,
but he was degraded, imprisoned, escaped, and finished his life in Spain
in poverty and obscurity, deserted by all his friends and his wife. It
was a melancholy rentree for the Duc d'Aumale. His thoughts must have
gone back to the far-off days when the gallant young officer, fils de
France, won his first military glory in Algiers, and thought the world
was at his feet. His brilliant exploit, capturing the Smala of
Abd-el-Kader, has been immortalised by Vernet in the great historical
picture that one sees at Versailles. There are always artists copying
parts of it, particularly one group, where a lovely, fair-haired woman
is falling out of a litter backward. Even now, when one thinks of the
King Louis Philippe, with all his tall, strong, young sons (there is a
well-known picture of the King on horseback with all his sons around
him--splendid specimens of young manhood), it seems incredible that they
are not still ruling and reigning at the Tuileries.
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