ONE:The Duchesse de Chartres, n¨¦e Mlle. de Penthi¨¨vre, was an angel of goodness and kindness. She had conceived so violent a passion for the Duc de Chartres, when she had met him for the first time, that she declared she would either marry him or take the veil. It was a most unfortunate choice to have been made, especially by so saintly a personage, for the court and society of Louis XV. did not include a more corrupt and contemptible character than the notorious Philippe-¨¦galit¨¦.¡°So that one would be quite alone? No one could hear anything that went on there?¡± THREE:The Comtesse de Noailles was a most unfortunate choice to have made for the post in question; for although a woman of the highest character, religious, charitable, and honourable, she was so stiff, precise, [187] and absolutely the slave of every detail of court etiquette that she only tormented and estranged the young girl, who was ready to be conciliated, and whom she might have influenced and helped. The Dauphine, however, an impetuous, thoughtless girl of fifteen, accustomed to the freedom of her own family life at the court of Vienna, hated and ridiculed the absurd restrictions of the French Court, called the Countess ¡°Madame l¡¯Etiquette,¡± and took her own way.M. le Brun, though neither disagreeable nor ill-tempered, was impossible on account of the dissipated life he led. Always running after other women, always gambling and in debt, spending not only his own money but all his wife¡¯s earnings, another woman would have left him or led a miserable life. Not so Lisette. She lived in his house on friendly terms with him, though their marriage had long been one only in name.

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