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Updated: June 3, 2025
When sixty years ago Lord Brougham, en route for Italy, was thrown from his travelling berline and his leg was broken, near the Italian hamlet of Cannes, the Riviera was as unknown to the polite world as the centre of China. The grand tour which every young aristocrat made with his tutor, on coming of age, only included crossing from France into Italy by the Alps.
Also that Fersen has got a stupendous new Coach built, of the kind named Berline; done by the first artists; according to a model: they bring it home to him, in Choiseul's presence; the two friends take a proof-drive in it, along the streets; in meditative mood; then send it up to "Madame Sullivan's, in the Rue de Clichy," far north, to wait there till wanted.
Fortunately one of the coachmen and two of the older grooms from the stables returned in the early dawn after the street demonstrations outside the Emperor's windows had somewhat calmed down, and with the routine of many years of domestic service had promptly and without murmurings set to to obey the orders given to them the day before: to have the travelling berline ready with four horses by seven o'clock.
It was an indifferent-looking berline, and my men were within an ace of allowing it to pass. But I have a nose, mon cher" and he tapped the organ with ludicrous significance "and, bon Dieu, what affair! I can smell an aristocrat a league off. Down upon that coach I swooped like a hawk upon a sparrow.
Four years have gone by since the night on which the lacerated Caron la Boulaye was smuggled out of Bellecour in Robespierre's berline and in that four years much of the things that were prophesied have come to pass aye, and much more besides that was undreamt of at the outset by the revolutionaries.
In truth, the objection had not occurred to me, but I did not wish to appear to have less wits than he gave me credit for, so I answered that it was indeed surprising. 'Had they done so they would have made a public scandal, and run a chance of missing their end. Short of taking the berline to pieces, they could not have discovered the hiding-place.
When I first went to Belgium I was given a sixty horse-power touring car, and when the weather turned unpleasant I asked for and was given a limousine that was big enough to sleep in, and when I found this too clumsy, the commandant of the Parc des Automobiles obligingly exchanged it for a ninety horse-power berline. They were most accommodating, those Belgians.
The Empress had graciously offered me a seat in her berline, and all the way to the village, entirely forgetful apparently of the scene through which she passed, she chatted away, asking me a thousand personal questions about myself and my affairs, for a kindly curiosity in the doings of everyone around her was one of her most marked characteristics.
Ah, they conceive so readily, like the woman called "Ma berline," that their Adolphe must be loved by the women of France, that they are rejoiced to possess, legally, a man about whom everybody goes crazy. Generally, in this supreme scene of conjugal life, the fair sex is the executioner, while, in the contrary case, man is the assassin. "Enough, Adolphe!
"The younger one did not by any chance inquire of you whether it would be possible to hire a berline?" asked Caron desperately. "No," the landlord answered him, with wondering eyes. "She appeared as anxious as her mother for the repairing of the coach in which they came, that they might again depart in it."
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