ONE:THE early years of the childhood of Elisabeth Vige were peaceful and happy enough, and already at a tender age the genius which was to determine and characterise her future life began to appear. According to the usual custom she was placed in a convent to be educated, and though only six years old when she was sent there, she had then and during the five years of her convent life, the habit of drawing and scribbling perpetually and upon everything she could lay her hands on, much to the displeasure of the good Sisters and of her companions.
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ONE:Neither Napoleon nor any of his family had at all the manners and customs suitable to the position in which he had placed them, and he was quite aware of the fact. His mother, as he said, could speak neither French nor Italian properly, but only a kind of Corsican patois, which he was ashamed to hear. He did everything he could to win over the emigrs and those of the old noblesse who had remained [460] in France; his great wish was to mingle the new noblesse he soon began to create with the faubourg St. Germain, and his great disappointment and anger was excited by the non-success of his attempts. From the time he rose to supreme power he contemplated a court and a noblesse for the country and a crown for himself. And that a court formed out of the materials supplied by his generals and their families would be ridiculous he knew, and meant to avoid.Mme. de Genlis, however, found an opportunity of writing to the Duchess of Orlans in France; the Duke was by this time arrested.
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FORE:But these were not the directions in which the guidance of Nature led most of her followers. It was not to a life of primitive simplicity and discomfort that Trzia and her friends felt themselves directed; no, the h?tel de Fontenay, in the rue de Paradis, and the chateau of the same name in the country were the scene of ceaseless gaiety and amusement. La Rochefoucauld, Rivarol, Chamfort, La Fayette, the three brothers de Lameth, all of whom were in love with their fascinating hostess; Mirabeau, Barnave, Vergniaud, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulinsall the leaders of the radical party were to be met at her parties, and most of them were present at a splendid entertainment given by the Marquis and Marquise de Fontenay to the Constituants at their chateau, and called, after the fashion of Rousseau, a fte la Nature.
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FORE:During the March that followed the marriage a [41] kind of mission or religious revival went on at Paris; a sort of wave of religious devotion seemed to have arisen in opposition to the atheism and irreligion of the day. Notre Dame and most of the other churches were thronged during the frequent services, religious processions passed through the streets amidst excited crowds, friars preached and people knelt around them regardless of the bitterly cold weather. Strange to say, one of those who fell victims to their imprudence was Mme. Geoffrin, who, in spite of her infidel friends and surroundings, had never really abandoned her belief in God, or the practice of her religious duties, but had always gone secretly to mass, retained a seat in the Church of the Capucines, and an apartment in a convent to which she occasionally retired to spend a retreat. A chill she got at this mission brought on an attack of apoplexy, and she remained partly paralysed during the remaining year of her life. Her daughter, the Marquise de la Fert Imbault, took devoted care of her, refusing to allow any of her infidel friends to visit her, and only admitting those whose opinions were not irreligious.
