FORE:��All this is not of good omen,�� said the King, his grandfather, ��and I don��t know how it can have happened that I have made him Duc de Berri; it is an unlucky name.�� [58]

FORE:There were, of course, still those to be met with whose appearance, manners, and ways recalled that stately, magnificent court, which long afterwards was the beau ideal Napoleon vainly tried to realise. Amongst others was the Duc de Richelieu, one of the most brilliant, the most polished, the most dissipated, and the most heartless figures of the courts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. His son, the Duc de Fronsac, was, though not equally attractive, quite as vicious as his father, and they entertained for each other a hatred they generally veiled, at any rate in public, under the most polished sarcasm.

FORE:But the condition of Pauline, brought up in all the luxury and magnificence of the h?tel de Noailles, and suddenly cast adrift in a country the language and habits of which were unknown to her, with very little money and no means of getting more when that was gone, was terrifying indeed. She did not know where anything should be bought, nor what it should cost; money seemed to her to melt in her hands. She consulted her husband, but he could not help her. If she tried to make her own dresses, she only spoilt the material, as one can well imagine. Their three servants, the German boy, a Dutch woman, and after a little while an English nurse, could not understand each other, but managed to quarrel perpetually and keep up the most dreadful chatter. Her child, this time a son, was born on March 30th, Easter Day. She had looked forward to celebrating that festival at [237] the new church then to be opened, at which many of the young people were to receive their first Communion. Pauline, like all the rest of the French community, had been intensely interested and occupied in the preparations. Flowers were begged from sympathising friends to decorate the altar, white veils and dresses were made for the young girls by their friends, all, even those whose faith had been tainted and whose lives had been irreligious, joining in this touching and solemn festival, which recalled to them their own land, the memories of their childhood, and the recollection of those they had lost.

FORE:The provincial assemblies were sitting all over France in 1787-8 in preparation for the States-General which were soon to be summoned with such fatal results. The Duc d��Ayen was president of the assembly of Limousin, M. de Beaune of that of Auvergne; nearly all the men of her family sat in one or the other, and were eager for the reforms which, if they could have been properly carried out and had satisfied the nation, would have indeed been the beginning of a new era of prosperity and happiness.With his other sister, the Comtesse de Tess��, she was not at first so intimate. For Mme. de Tess��, a brisk, clever, amusing, original person, was not only a friend of Voltaire, and a diligent frequenter of the salons of the philosophers, wits, and encyclop?dists, but, although not going to their extreme lengths, was rather imbued with their opinions.

FORE:At the beginning of August, Pauline, after making up the accounts, told her father-in-law that she had enough money left only to carry on the household for three months longer, but that if they returned to Brussels it would last twice as long, for they could live there much better at half the cost.THE next day was the divorce. M. de Fontenay hurried away towards the Pyrenees and disappeared from France and from the life and concerns of the woman who had been his wife.

FORE:Besides the gardens of the Tuileries, Luxembourg, and Palais Royal, there were plenty of other places to which the Parisians resorted for amusement.The ease and gentle gaiety which pervaded these light evening repasts gave them a charm which was never found in a dinner-party; there was a kind of intimacy and confidence amongst the guests, who, being perfectly well-bred people, knew how to dispense with all formality and restraint.