The fate of Mme. Du Barry is well known. She escaped to England where she was kindly received, and where the great value of her diamonds enabled her to live quite well herself, and also to help many of the emigrs, to whom she was most generous. But the Duc de Brissac had remained concealed at Louveciennes, and she insisted on going back to him. The friends she made in England pointed out the danger of doing so, and did all they could to dissuade herthey even unharnessed the horses of her travelling carriage. It was all useless, she would go. Soon after her return to Louveciennes the Duc de Brissac was seized and carried away from her to be taken to Orlans. On the way he and his companions were attacked and murdered by the mob and his head brought to Mme. Du Barry. Then she herself was betrayed and denounced by a little negro named Zamore, who was in her service, and had been loaded with benefits and kindness by Louis XV. and by herself. In consequence of the denunciation of this wretch she was thrown into prison, tried, and executed at the end of 1793.Mesdames Adla?de and Victoire set off early in 1791. Their whole journey was a perpetual danger. After getting their passports signed with difficulty by the Commune, they were denounced at Svres by a maid-servant, stopped by the Jacobins and accused of being concerned in plots and of taking money out of the country, and detained for a fortnight, when they managed to get permission to go on, and left at 10 oclock on a Saturday night, arriving on Sunday morning at Fontainebleau, where they were again stopped and threatened by the mob, who were just going to be joined by the gardes nationaux when a hundred Chasseurs de Lorraine, luckily quartered there, charged the mob, opened the gates, and passed the carriages on. At Arnay-le-Duc they were detained for eleven days, and only allowed to proceed when the Comte de Narbonne appeared with a permission extorted by [108] Mirabeau from the revolutionary government at Paris.Mme. Le Brun saw Mme. de Narischkin and her sister before she left Russia, for though she only intended to be there for a short time, she remained for six years, making an immense number of friends, and apparently no enemy but Zuboff, the last favourite of the Empress Catherine, an arrogant, conceited young man of two-and-twenty, whom she supposed she had offended by not paying court to him; and therefore he tried all he could to injure her with the Empress.
ONE:Casimir was already seventeen, a great comfort, and very popular. He had been on a visit to London, when, as he returned with Prince Esterhazy, who had a boat of his own, he had a message at Dover from Pamela begging him to go to her. Since the arrest and death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, she had married Mr. Pitcairn, American Consul at Hamburg, but was overwhelmed with debts, and for some reason insisted on coming to Paris. She was hiding from her creditors, and appealed to Casimir, who gave her fifty louis and hid her on board the boat. She had with her her daughter by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and stayed some time at Paris, in spite of the representations of Mme. de Genlis that she ought to go back to her husband at Hamburg.
TWO:The Duchess sat by the fire in her armchair, surrounded by her books, her work, and her gold snuff-box; the children sat round her, also reading, working, or talking of anything that interested them.Capital letter T
TWO:When people in Parisian society thought of the country, they thought of lambs with ribbons round their necks, shepherdesses in fanciful costumes with long crooks, or a rosire kneeling before the family and friends of the seigneur to be crowned with flowers and presented with a rose as the reward of virtue, in the presence of an admiring crowd of villagers; of conventional gardens, clipped trees, and artificial ruins; but wild, picturesque mountain scenery was their abhorrence.
TWO:One of her first portraits was that of the Polish Countess Potocka who came with the Count, and directly he had gone away said to Mme. Le Brun: That is my third husband, but I think I am going to take the first back again; he suits me better, though he is a drunkard.She always kept this drawing, her foretaste of the brilliant success that began so early and never forsook her.
THREE:Balls were not then the crushes they afterwards became. The company was not nearly so numerous; there was plenty of room for those who were not [54] dancing to see and hear what was going on. Mme. Le Brun, however, never cared for dancing, but preferred the houses where music, acting, or conversation were the amusements. One of her favourite salons was that of the charg daffaires of Saxony, M. de Rivire, whose daughter had married her brother Louis Vige. He and her sister-in-law were constantly at her house. Mme. Vige acted very well, was a good musician, and extremely pretty. Louis Vige was also a good amateur actor; no bad or indifferent acting would have been tolerated in the charades and private theatricals in which Talma, Larive, and Le Kain also took part.
