ONE:Henriette and Ad��la?de were devoted to their old governess, the Duchesse de Ventadour. They got her an appartement next to theirs at Versailles, and in her salon, amongst her friends, they always spent an hour or two every evening after supper. Madame Henriette used to say it was the happiest part of her day. The Duchesse de Ventadour was an excellent woman, though she had been rather galante [65] in her [172] youth. She and her mother had brought up twenty-three ��Children of France.�� The mother was said to have saved the life of Louis XV. by giving him a counter-poison.It was naturally impossible that Mme. de Genlis should be a conspicuous member of the Orl��ans 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 Bar��ze, 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 P��tion, whom she received in her salon and for whom she declared that up to the time of the King��s murder she had ��a true esteem.�� Now P��tion 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��, P��tion, 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.