Trzia, therefore, found herself in one of the horrible prisons of that Revolution whose progress she had done everything in her power to assist. In the darkness and gloom of its dungeon she afterwards declared that the rats had bitten her feet.
ONE:For she adored her grandchildren, whom she kept entirely under her own control, allowing their parents to have no voice in their education, which she certainly directed with great care and wisdom.In 1808 and 1809 Mme. Le Brun travelled in Switzerland, with which she was enraptured; after which she bought a country house at Louveciennes, [155] where in future she passed the greater part of the year, only spending the winter in Paris.
THREE:They then returned to Lyon, where they parted company; Flicits aunt and cousin returning to Paris, while she and her mother went back to Burgundy.PAULINE was so ill after this that her husband took her and their remaining child to Aix-les-Bains, and then to their chateau of Plauzat in Auvergne, a curious, picturesque building, part of which dated from the twelfth or thirteenth century, which dominated the little town of the same name, and was surrounded by the most beautiful country.
THREE:Ah! there you are, Isabey. You have brought me the designs I ordered?That she persistently refused proves how much all these professions were worth, and this time she does in her memoirs blame herself for her conduct; in fact, she declares that she felt ever afterwards a remorse that never left her, and that would be eternal; as she considered herself the cause of the death of her husband. If she had gone with him as he entreated her to do and as she acknowledged that she ought to have done, she could have induced him to leave France with her, he had sufficient money to enable them to live comfortably abroad, and his life would have been saved.
The clamour died away; all night reassuring proclamations were heard about the streets.Stop! he cried; I know that woman.It was naturally impossible that Mme. de Genlis should be a conspicuous member of the Orlans household and yet not mix herself up with intimacies and friendships amongst the Revolutionists, especially as some of them at that time had not shown themselves in their true colours. She corresponded with Barze, who wrote to her about her books, and whose letters were full of the simple life of the peasants and the beauties of nature in the Pyrenees, but who soon developed into one of the monsters of the Terror. She could not be blamed for that, as she did not know his real character; but the same cannot be said with regard to her friendship with Ption, whom she received in her salon and for whom she declared that up to the time of the Kings murder she had a true esteem. Now Ption was a vulgar, brutal ruffian, as any one knows who has read the account of his behaviour during the miserable affair of the return of the royal family from Varennes; and yet after that she accepted his escort to England, and said that she remained persuaded that he had a most honest, upright soul, and the most virtuous principles. There are some people who make the very names of virtue and duty obnoxious to one, and of this number was certainly Mme. de Genlis. In spite of her outcries about the injustice and falsehood of the suspicions and odium attached to her concerning her conduct at this time, and causing her afterwards considerable annoyance and difficulties, her friendships with and praises of such characters as Philippe-galit, Ption, and others, added to the way in [425] which she displayed her rejoicing in the earlier excesses of the Revolutionary party, and her constant association with the authors of the disgraceful libels and attacks upon the Queen and royal family, amply justified whatever might be said against her.
