Descendants of the Stuarts

216 THE DESCENDANTS
unhappy one. The bridegroom was celebrated for
his dissolute manners, and had, even at seventeen,
all the precocity in vice of a man of sixty. His
morals had been contaminated by his preceptor, the
Abbe Dubois, who, instead of restraining, encou-
raged his youthful extravagances, which have ren-
dered him so notorious, that the phrase, " the orgies
of the regency," is as familiar as household words.
His open disregard of the mysteries of religion
shocked the prejudices even of the irreligious Prench,
and he was suspected of the most atrocious and
unheard-of crimes. Louis's excuse for the union of
his daughter with the Due de Chartres was, that, on
account of his belligerent relations with foreign
powers, he could neither match her nor his
nephew as he wished, and that, consequently, the
only resource which remained to him was inter-
marriages between members of his own family.
But this was a flimsy pretext; for it might satis-
factorily be objected that the Duke of Chartres
evinced no inclination for the married state, and
that, even had he been at peace with other powers,
no foreign princes would have espoused his natural
daughters.
In person the Duke of Chartres was plain, and
of unprepossessing appearance, being short, stout,
and ruddy. His manners corresponded with his
exterior ; they were unpolished and ungallant,
and savoured strongly of those of his mother and
maternal grandfather. His redeeming qualifica-