Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/157

 with apprehension the possible accession of a grandson of Louis Philippe to the troublous royalty of Spain. Cobden and the school he represented in England did not think it mattered a straw to England, from the political point of view, whom the Queen of Spain married. But the transaction could not be looked at as merely political. It was condemned throughout the length and breadth of England as grossly immoral, and the disgust it occasioned was all the greater on account of the pretensions to high motives and to religious principles assumed by the French King and his Minister.

Events soon confirmed the views of the Queen and Prince, so often inculcated by Stockmar, that sorrow will always be found dogging sin. The Spanish marriages took place in October, 1846; in fifteen months from that time Louis Philippe and the dynasty he hoped to found had been swept away; the little Spanish daughter-in-law whose son he had hoped might wear the crown of Spain was, with other members of his family, fugitive in England, indebted for shelter and even clothing to our Queen, who forgot all her resentment, and gave them a most kind welcome. Nothing came about as Louis Philippe had planned. The Queen of Spain had children; her grandson is now the baby King of Spain, and Louis Philippe's great-grandson, exiled from France, is addressing futile proclamations from English soil, to assure the French people that when they want him, which they show no sign of doing, he is ready to ascend the throne of his ancestors. It has been remarked that a strange fatality attended on many of the chief actors in the Spanish marriages. The French Minister at Madrid, M. Bresson, committed suicide in 1847. Louis Philippe and his dynasty were