Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/147

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IMMIGRANTS AND EMIGRANTS.
127

Marie Antoinette, by whom she was called "la petite Anglaise," entrusted her with secret missions abroad, and she accompanied the Princesse de Lamballe, in 1791 or 1792, to England. Just prior to the capture of the Tuileries the Princesse, to place her out of danger, sent her on a mission to Italy, and they never met again. Catherine married in Italy the Marquis Broglio-Solari, who was Venetian ambassador at Brussels in 1803. She there dined with Barras, and heard him say—in vino beritas—"He" (Bonaparte) "will not succeed in his ambitious projects, for Louis XVI.'s son is still living." In 1840 she made an affidavit in London that Naundorff, whom she had just seen, had given her proofs of his being the Dauphin. Now it is not easy to see how Venice, part of the Cisalpine Republic in 1803, could have had an ambassador at Brussels, then French territory. I can find no trace of a Lady Mary Duncan, and though this Catherine Hyde may have really served the unfortunate Princesse de Lamballe, her book, with its professed quotations from the Princess's diary, is a romance, possibly founded on fact.

The Countess of Albany, though no Englishwoman, may as titular Queen of England receive mention. The Young Pretender's widow, in company with Alfieri, was living in Paris from 1787 to 1792, after a visit to London, where she had been presented to the rival Queen, thus virtually