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ONE:When my alliance with the Princess of Piedmont was decided, the Duc de Vauguyon told me that the King desired to speak to me. I trembled a little at an order which differed entirely from the usual regulations, for I never saw Louis XV. without dArtois, and at certain hours. A private audience of his Majesty without my having asked for it gave me cause for anxiety.... TWO:THE last of the four French heroines whose histories are here to be related, differed in her early surroundings and circumstances from the three preceding ones. She was neither the daughter of a powerful noble like the Marquise de Montagu, nor did she belong to the finance or the bourgeoisie like Mme. Le Brun and Mme. Tallien. Her father was noble but poor, her childhood was spent, not in a great capital but in the country, and as she was born nearly ten years before the first and six-and-twenty years before the last of the other three, she saw much more than they did of the old France before it was swept away by the Revolution.
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ONE:THE society of the Palais Royal was at that time the most brilliant and witty in Paris, and she soon became quite at home there. The Comtesse de Blot, lady of honour to the Duchesse de Chartres, was pleasant enough when she was not trying to pose as a learned woman, at which times her long dissertations were tiresome and absurd; she was also ambitious, and what was worse, avaricious.Alexander, afterwards Alexander I., resembled his mother in beauty and charm of character; but Constantine was like his father, whose eccentric, gloomy disposition seemed to foreshadow the fate which lay before him. His strange, unbalanced nature alternated between good and evil; capricious and violent, he was yet capable of kindness and generosity. TWO:Madame, do you know what it costs to wish for once in ones life to see the sun rise? Read that and tell me what you think of the poetry of our friends.Your Majestys orders have been communicated to me.
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ONE:They all boarded at the La Fayette, but as they were very poor there was very little to eat. They would dine upon ?ufs la neige, and spend the evening without a fire, wrapped in fur cloaks to keep out the cold of the early spring. M. de Montagu always had declared he had only had one good dinner in Holland, and that was one night when he dined with General Van Ryssel. TWO:AS M. Arsne Houssaye truly remarks, the French Revolution was not made by the people. They imagine that they made it, but the real authors were Voltaire, Condorcet, Chamfort, the two Mirabeau, La Fayette and his friends, Necker, Talleyrand, Barras, Saint-Just, &c., nearly all gentlemen, mostly nobles; by Philippe-galit, Duke of Orlans and prince of the blood; by Louis XVI. himself.
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ONE:A royalist, an emigr, a Prince; but the only man she never ceased to love, and of whom she said, He was her true husband.LA MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR TWO:Neither of the young wives were altogether fortunate, for some years later two beautiful Polish girls, whose father had been killed in the Polish war, were brought by their mother to the Russian court. The eldest and prettiest was only sixteen, and was married to Prince Narischkin, but the overpowering passion which she inspired in the Emperor Alexander is well known; whilst her sister captivated the terrible Constantine.[85]
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ONE:Gregory Orloff became her all-powerful favourite, and although she would never agree to his preposterous ambition and allow him to be married to her and crowned Emperor, she loaded the Orloff family with riches and honours, which they retained after other favourites had succeeded the gigantic guardsman in her affections. TWO:M. de Beaune was cheerful enough when the day was fine, as he spent his time in visiting them; but when it rained he stayed at home fretting, grumbling, and adding unintentionally to the troubles of those he loved. He took to reading romances aloud to Pauline, who could not bear them, partly, perhaps, from over-strictness, but probably more because in those days, before Sir Walter Scott had elevated and changed the tone of fiction, novels were really as a rule coarse, immoral, [236] and, with few exceptions, tabooed by persons of very correct notions. However, she knew M. de Beaune must be amused, so she made no objection.
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