FORE:I want you to do my portrait at once.ON the 10th of August, 1792, as every one knows, the fury of the Revolution broke out in the attack upon the Tuileries. For the third time Trzia saw Tallien soon after that carnival of horror and bloodshed of which he was one of the leading spirits; when a few days after it she sat in one of the tribunes of the Assembly and applauded the fiery speech in which he defied the enemies of France, for the armies of the allies and the emigrs were gathering on the frontier, eager to avenge the atrocities which had been and were being committed, and rescue the royal family. Unluckily it was another failure. The incompetence of the leaders, the delays, the mismanagement, the mistakes, the disasters, cannot of course be entered into in a sketch like this, but the effect it had upon the fate of those still in prison and in danger who remained in the hands of the tigers thirsting for their blood, was terrible indeed.
THREE:When the Bastille was destroyed, and the officers who were accused of nothing but defending the post entrusted to them were murdered, that prison [324] contained seven prisoners, of whom one was detained by the request of his family, four were forgers, one was an idiot, the other unknown. [102]
THREE:From her first arrival they set themselves against the Dauphine, they exaggerated the faults and follies which were only those of a thoughtless, wilful child of fifteen, and by their unjustifiable spite gave colour to the infamous and false reports circulated by her enemies. They tried to sow dissension between her and the Comtesse de Provence, hoping by means of his wife to engage their second nephew in a party against her. The fault was chiefly that of Madame Adla?de, for Madame Victoire was far [201] more gentle and easygoing, and Madame Sophie so dreadfully shy and nervous that she was incapable of taking a leading part in anything.
THREE:Have you no friend to accompany you?With these and all the different relations of her husband, Mme. dAyen lived in the greatest harmony, [176] especially with his sister, the Duchesse de Lesparre, a calm, holy, angelic woman after her own heart.
