The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-08 00:00:00

THE MARQUIS D'ORVAULT.

The Paris papers publish an account of an action
now going on which must certainly find a place
among future causes celebres. A cab-driver named
Schumacker, sixty-three years of age, partially in-
firm, married to a woman who, though an invalid,
helps him in his business, and, in particular, washes
his cab, and occasionally grooms his horses, de-
mands from his daughter and son-in-law the means
of subsistence. Cab-driving has of late been a
losing trade with him ; which, as he is almost
totally deaf, and in bad weather suffers great pain
from the effects of accidents in which he has twice
had a leg broken, is not astonishing. The daughter
is the Marquise d'Orvault, and lives with her hus-
band, in an apartment of which the annual rent is
11,000 francs, and which is said to be magnificently
furnished. The marquis has horses which the
marchioness does not groom, and carriages of the
latest make which she naturally does not wash
down. When Catherine Schumacker married the
marquis a year ago her fortune consisted of up-
wards of a million francs in money and securi-
ties, besides 325,000 francs in
jewellery and per-
sonal property of various kinds. She was then
thirty-six years of age—less than half the age of
her husband, who was eighty-three.
If the daughter of the cab-driver was, at the
time of her marriage, neither poor nor respectable,
the marquis, at least, did not resemble her in one
respect :he was decidedly poor. An annuity of
2,700 francs allowed him by his relations, and a
pension of 2,500 francs from the Emperor, was
all he had to live upon ; and he had luxurious tastes.
Catherine Schumacker's fifty thousand pounds
tempted him, and it no doubt suited her very well
to become the wife of a marquis, eighty-three

years of age.
The bridegroom's life had already been an event-
ful one. The importance of his very ancient family
is strikingly shown by the fact that during the
reign of terror no less than twenty-two of its mem-
bers were guillotined. The present marquis escaped
abroad, but, returning on the establishment of the
empire, entered the French army as M. de Mau-
breuil, one of his numerous family names. He
attained the rank of major, and gained the cross of
the Legion of Honour, which, on entering Paris in
1814 with the staff of the allied Sovereigns, he
tied to his horse's tail. The same day he further
distinguished himself by helping to
pass the rope
round the neck of the statue of Napoleon on the
column of the Place Vendome, when it had been
decided that the fallen hero should be degraded

in effigy.
The marquis's hatred of the Bonaparte family
now became so great that,
finding the Queen of
Westphalia, the wife of Jerome Bonaparte, was
about to cross the forest of Fontainebleau on her
way into exile, he attacked her and took from her
all her jewellery, besides 84,000 francs in gold.
For this feat of arms, however, he was brought to
trial and was sentenced on the 16th of May, 1818,
to five years' imprisonment. Escaping to England,
where he lived for some years, he attracted no fur-
ther attention until, on the 21st of January, 1827,
he suddenly:appeared in the Cathedral of St. Penis,
where a service was being performed on the oc-
casion of the anniversary of Louis the Sixteenth's
death. Seeing M. de Talleyrand among those pre-
sent he went up to him, and with a blow in the face
knocked him down. This brought upon the
marquis a penalty of five years' imprisonment, a
fine of 500 francs, and ten years' police surveil-
, lance.

We may here observe that the story of the blow
in the face administered to Talley rand has been
told differently. The version given in the formal
report of " Schumacker against Orvault" is no
doubt the correct one ; and, admitting it to be
so, the outrage committed by the Marquis d'Orvault
(or Marquis de Maubreuil, as he was then called),
in a place of worship and in presence of the King,
could not, even by the most determined fire-eater,
be looked upon as a mere challenge to fight a
duel. It has been mentioned, however, as a proof
of Talleyrand's imperturbable coolness and presence
of mind, that on receiving this so-called " soufflet"
which knocked him down, he rose with difficulty,
and, still stunned by the blow, exclaimed, ".Quel
terrible coup de poing !" "It will be remem-
bered," says the reviewer of Sir Henry Bulwer's
" Historical Characters" in the last number of the
Quarterly, after repeating the anecdote, "that a
soufflet is a dishonouring insult, a coup de poing a
mere act of brutality." All things considered, it
may be said that " an act of brutality" was indeed
committed ; and if people had not been determined
~to see esprit or finesse in every phrase that Talley-