FORE:David, Chardin, the celebrated genre painter, Van Loo, Grard, La Tour, Joseph Vernet, and many others were flourishing. Louis Vige was also an artist. He painted portraits in pastel, of which his daughter says that they were extremely good, many of them worthy of the famous La Tour; also charming scenes after the style of Watteau, in oil.
FORE:Campan ran; the page was already in the saddle, but was altering a stirrup, which changed the destiny of France. The letter was brought back.It was impossible to spare much time to be absent from Paris, but Mme. Le Brun often spent two or three days at the magnificent chateaux to which she was invited, either to paint a portrait or simply as a guest.
ONE:The administrateur de police has just left; he has been to tell me that to-morrow I go to the tribunal, which means to the scaffold. It is indeed unlike the dream I had last night, that Robespierre was dead and the prisons open; but thanks to your incredible cowardice, there will soon be nobody left in France capable of realising it.I want you to do my portrait at once.
TWO:In the cell of Trzia and her companions had been massacred a number of priests on that occasion, and still upon its wall were the silhouettes marked in blood, where two of the murderers had rested their swords.
THREE:The continual terror in which she now lived began to affect the health of Lisette. She knew perfectly well that she herself was looked upon with sinister eyes by the ruffians, whose bloodthirsty hands would soon hold supreme power in France. Her house in the rue Gros-Chenet, in which she had only lived for three months, was already marked; sulphur was thrown down the grating into the cellars; if she looked out of the windows she saw menacing figures of sans-culottes, shaking their fists at the house.The Conciergerie was crowded, but one of the prisoners, Mme. Laret, gave up her bed to the old Marchale; Mme. dAyen laid herself upon a pallet on the floor, and the Vicomtesse, saying, What is the use of resting on the eve of eternity? sat all night reading, by the light of a candle, a New Testament she had borrowed, and saying prayers.
FORE:Comtesse de Noailles, you forget the grand-aum?nier, to bless the rising sun after having exorcised the spirits of darkness.
THE Marquis de la Haie, uncle of Flicit by the second marriage of her grandmother, strongly disapproved of the way in which his mother treated his half-sister and her children. He vainly tried to influence her to behave better to them, and showed them much kindness and affection himself. Unfortunately he was killed at the battle of Minden. A strange fatality was connected with him, the consequences of which can scarcely be appreciated or comprehended. He was one of the gentilhommes de la manche [112] to the Duc de Bourgogne, eldest son of the Dauphin, and elder brother of Louis XVI., who was extremely fond of him. One day he was playing with the boy, and [363] in trying to lift him on to a wooden horse he let him fall. Terrified at the accident, and seeing that the Prince had not struck his head, had no wound nor fracture nor any apparent injury, he begged him not to tell any one what had happened. The Duc de Bourgogne promised and kept his word, but from that day his health began to fail. None of the doctors could find out what was the matter with him, but, in fact, he was suffering from internal abscesses, which ultimately caused his death. Not till after La Haie had fallen at Minden did he confess, It is he who was the cause of my illness, but I promised him not to tell.The Duc dAyen spent the terrible night of August 9th in the Tuileries, and both of them followed the King to the Assembly. Even M. de Grammont, who had been strongly infected with the ideas of the time, and even belonged to the National Guard, ran great risk of his life by his support of the King on that day.Amongst other old friends whom she now frequented was the Comtesse de Sgur, who equally disliked the alterations in social matters.M. Geoffrin did not altogether approve of his wifes perpetual presence at the h?tel Tencin, which had by no means a good reputation; and when she also began to receive in her own house a few of the literary men whom she met there, philosophers, freethinkers, and various persons upon whom he looked with suspicion, he at first strongly objected. But it was useless. His wife had found the sixteen years of her married life remarkably dull; she had at length, by good fortune, discovered the means of transforming her monotonous existence into one full of interest, and the obscurity which had hitherto been her lot into an increasing celebrity. She turned a deaf ear to his remonstrances, and after a good deal of dissension and quarrelling the husband gave way and contented himself with looking after the household and being a silent guest at the famous dinners given by his wife, until at length, on some one asking her what had become of the old gentleman [38] who was always there and never spoke, she replied
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