THREE:The enthusiasm of Flicit for the court of Louis XIV. found worthier objects of admiration than the Duc de Richelieu, in the excellent Marchal de Balincourt, and his friends, the Marchal de Biron and the Marquis de Carrillac. This last was ninety-one years old, Biron was eighty-six or seven, and Balincourt not more than seventy. He used to speak with envy of Biron, saying: He was thirty years old at the death of the late king. When hearing them talk together she felt herself transported into the days of that magnificent reign.When Mme. de Bouzolz had a baby, she nursed her devotedly, and took the deepest interest in the child. But the height of bliss seemed to be attained when soon after she had a daughter herself, with which she was so enraptured and about which she made such a fuss, that one can well imagine how tiresome it must have been for the rest of the family. She thought of nothing else, would go nowhere, except to the wedding of her sister, Mme. du Roure, with M. de Thsan; and when in the following spring the poor little thing died after a short illness, she fell into a state of grief and despair which alarmed the whole family, who found it impossible to comfort her. She would sit by the empty cradle, crying, and making drawings in pastel of the child from memory after its portrait had been put away out of her sight. But her unceasing depression and lamentation so worried M. de Beaune that, seeing this, she left off talking about it, and he, hoping she was becoming [198] more resigned to the loss, proposed that she should begin again to go into society after more than a year of retirement. She consented, to please him, for as he would not leave her his life was, of course, very dull. But the effort and strain of it made her so ill that the next year she was obliged to go to Bagnres de Luchon. M. de Beaune, who was certainly a devoted father-in-law, went with her. Her mother and eldest sister came to visit her there; her husband travelled three hundred leagues, although he was ill at the time, to see how she was getting on, and in the autumn she was much better, and able to go to the wedding of her favourite sister, Rosalie, with the Marquis de Grammont.
Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit
