Capital letter ISheridan took the matter up, the postillions were examined, but all they said was that a strange gentleman had taken them to a public-house and bribed them to take the road they had followed. The hired servant had disappeared. Not wishing to spend the time or money necessary to bring this mysterious affair into a law court, they did nothing more about it, and never understood why it had happened, or what was intended, or anything concerning it.Mme. Le Brun blamed her for having let the gold go, and just as she said, she never got its value again, for although the same number of pieces were [132] returned, instead of the Austrian gold coins they only gave her ducats, worth so much less that she lost 15,000 francs by them. Then she heard that the boy was sentenced to be hanged, and as he was the son of a concierge and his wife belonging to the Prince de Ligne, excellent people who had served her in Vienna with attention and civility, she was in despair, hurried to the governor to obtain his pardon, and with much difficulty succeeded in getting him sent away by sea; for the Empress had heard of it, and was very angry.
ONE:As to La Fayette, he had rushed to Paris, violently reproached the Assembly for the attack on the Tuileries, demanded the punishment of the Jacobins, and offered to the King the services which were of no value, and which, as long as they had been of any use, had been at the disposal of his enemies.
TWO:In spite of all her social success hers was not a disposition to be happy. She was too excitable, emotional, and unreasonable. A liaison with a brother of Garat brought her much unhappiness, [103] and her unfortunate marriages and love affairs caused the Emperor Napoleon to say to her one day at some court entertainment
THREE:Do not say a word to any one, said the Prince. I will undertake to turn out the insolent fellow without making a scandal, unless you will do it yourself.
TWO:Yet the generosity and kindness of her heart, and the number of victims she saved, outweighed, though without effacing, the disorders of her earlier life, [1] during the latter part of which, as the wife of a Catholic, royalist prince, whose love she returned and to whose opinions she was converted, she deeply regretted the errors of Notre Dame de Thermidor.
TWO:With these and all the different relations of her husband, Mme. dAyen lived in the greatest harmony, [176] especially with his sister, the Duchesse de Lesparre, a calm, holy, angelic woman after her own heart.
But besides their hostility to religion, the private characters of these philosophers did not, in many cases, by any means correspond with their writings and professions.She dressed, and doing all she could to remove the traces of tears, she prepared, in spite of her husbands remonstrances, to go to her sister, sat with her, talked with apparent cheerfulness, but exhausted by the effort, fell fainting to the ground, when she left her room.The Princess Dolgorouki came to see her after being presented to Napoleon, and on her asking how she liked his court, replied, It is not a court at all; it is a power.People were presented first to the King, then to the Queen, in different salons; of course magnificently dressed. The King, now that he was Louis XVI., very often did not speak but always made a friendly, gracious gesture, and kissed the lady presented, on one cheek only if she was a simple femme de qualit; on both if she was a duchess or grande dEspagne, or bore the name of one of the families who possessed the hereditary right to the honours of the Louvre and the title of cousin of the King.
荣誉榜
THREE:The next morning all was changed. The cringing, officious, timid civility of their tyrants left but little doubt in their minds. They clasped each others [334] hands, even then not daring to speak openly or show their joy, until the news, first a whisper, then a certainty, assured them that Robespierre was dead.The same evening I found on my table a [314] letter carefully enclosed in a double envelope, addressed
THREE:Qui que tu sois, voil ton ma?treLisette painted the two Princesses and the Prince Royal before returning to Rome, where she had no sooner arrived than she had to go back to Naples to paint the Queen.
