FORE:I was of no party, she writes, but that of religion. I desired the reform of certain abuses, and I saw with joy the demolition of the Bastille, the abolition of lettres de cachet, and droits de chasse. That was all I wanted, my politics did not go farther than that. At the same time no one saw with more grief and horror than I, the excesses committed from the first moments of the taking of the Bastille.... The desire to let my pupils see everything led me on this occasion into imprudence, and caused me to spend some hours in Paris to see from the Jardin de Beaumarchais the people of Paris demolishing the Bastille. I also had a curiosity to see the Cordeliers Club.... I went there and I saw the orators, cobblers, and porters with their wives and mistresses, mounting the tribune and shouting against nobles, priests, and rich people.... I remarked a fishwoman.... This pretty spectacle to which she was said to have taken her pupils, was, of course, approved of by the Duke of Orlans, who made the Duc de Chartres a member of the Jacobin Club, by the wish of the Duc dOrlans, assuredly not by mine; but, however, it must be remembered that that society was not then what it afterward became, [416] although its sentiments were already very exaggerated. However, it was a pretext employed to estrange the Duchess of Orlans from me.They went on to Clermont, the capital of the province, where M. de Beaune had a house in the town and a chateau and estate named Le Croc just outside it. They had passed into the hands of strangers, but all the furniture and contents of the chateau had been saved by the faithful concierges, the Monet, who, with the help of their relations and friends, had during the night carried it all away, taking beds to pieces, pulling down curtains and hangings, removing all the wine from the cellars, and hiding safely away the whole of it, which they now restored to its owners.
