The Duke of Orleans, the head of the "house of
France," and a guest of Great Britain, thought it well to write a letter to M. Willette, of the Journal pour Rire, congratu- lating him on his coarse and brutal caricatures of Queen Victoria. M. Willette showed the letter, probably as a reply to the censures of more decent friends, and the scandal became so great that the Duke authorised a denial of his letter. Thereupon it was photographed and published, and was recognised, to the confusion of all Legitimists and Orleanists, as undoubtedly genuine. M. de Pressense, one of the gravest of French writers, has accordingly told the Prince in the plainest way in the Aurore that while the letter does him no honour, his falsehood about it is dishonourable. The matter is of no importance to Englishmen, who regard their Queen as above caricature, but it must make thousands of French gentlemen reflect with pain that if the Duke of Orleans is the descendant of St. Louis, he is also the repre- sentative of Egalite. Even the latter, perhaps, retaining as he did some tradition of gentlemanliness, would have hesitated to praise a caricaturist of his host, and certainly had he praised him he would have avowed the fact.
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