MADELEINE DE BOURBON BUSSET

the princeSs bourbon DE PARME I told my Mom that I had found a distant cousin on the Heraudet side of the family, Gerard Robin, who was born in Archambault in the center of France. My Mom replied that Archambault was the cradle of the French Royal line, the Bourbon line. She then told me a story of what happened to her when she was 16 and working for the High Fashion Designer Bruyere in Paris. Her boss, the only person she knew to have Radio Londres (the London radio station available to the Free French), that would give her employees an update of the war events every morning. One day a rather ordinary looking woman came through the doors of the boutique and asked for help in getting some dresses to attend a very important wedding. Sylviane's boss made an excuse saying she was too busy to help and referred that lady to my mother, because the boss was unimpressed by the looks of that new customer who was wearing shoes with wooden soles. During the war, well dressed customers would manage to get nice looking shoes through the black market but that new customer looked like she came from the countryside. So my Mom, who was fairly new at the job got the responsibility of helping that lady choose a couple of dresses. Trying to impress the lady, my Mom took her to the largest fitting room overlooking the Place de la Concorde and requested one of the present top models to wear the dresses and show them to the new customer. The lady chose two black dresses of a different style but she wanted one of them to be of a different color. My Mom convinced her to choose the color prune or plum, color that she liked. The lady was delighted. She sat down to write a check and my Mom asked for her name on the purchase order. The lady then explained that she should write down the name Bourbon de Parme and just before that to write down the word Princess. My Mom was so surprised that she said:" Oh la la, you are my very first Princess to whom I am selling dresses!" The Princess was so amused that she promised to return with some fresh butter just for my Mom, being worried by the lack of color on my Mom's face and her being so skinny. At the time, the French were being rationed by the Germans who kept almost everything to themselves while starving the population. So the Princess de Bourbon de Parme became one of my Mom's regular customers and would always bring her fresh butter from Archambault. She even invited my Mom to visit her and stay at the chateau to rebuild her health. But my Mom did not follow up on that. Who knows, she could have married a Prince Charming??