As time went on and affairs became more and more menacing, Mme. Le Brun began to consider the advisability of leaving the country, and placing herself and her child out of the reach of the dangers and calamities evidently not far distant.
The social existence of Mme. de Genlis, writes Mme. dAbrants, [115] is always a problem difficult to resolve; it is composed of a mass of contradictions, one more extraordinary than the other. Of a noble family, whose name and alliances gave her the right to be chanoinesse of the Chapter of Alix, she was called until her marriage Comtesse de Lancy. She married M. de Genlis, a man of high rank, nearly related to most of the great families in the kingdom, and yet Mme. de Genlis had never in society the attitude of a grande dame.... The important part this woman played in the destinies of France is of such a nature that one must notice it, more especially as she denies a mass of facts, the most notorious of the time in which her name is mixed up, ... pretending never to have spoken to men of whom she must not only have been an acquaintance but a friend. Long before the first outbursts of the Revolution, Mme. de Genlis helped to prepare the influence which afterwards burst like an accursed bomb, covering with its splinters even the woman who had prepared the wick and perhaps lighted the match.The Parisians delighted in any shows or festivities, and the royal family were received with acclamations whenever they appeared from the mob, which twenty years later was yelling and howling with savage fury for their destruction.The Comtesse dAdhmar, who held a post in the Queens household, received one day a note from the Duchesse de Polignac, Governess of the Children of France, asking her to go with her to consult a fortune-teller of whom every one was talking. For many persons who declined to believe in God were ready and eager to put confidence in witchcraft, fortune-telling, spiritualism, or any other form of occult proceedings.
TWO:In the convent they were safe and at peace, except for another illness of Mademoiselle dOrlans, which left her so weak that Mme. de Genlis was afraid to tell her of the execution of her father in the November of 1794. She persuaded her not to read the French papers, telling her they were full of blasphemies and indecencies not fit for her to see. She had already received news of the execution of her husband, M. de Sillery, by which she was prostrated for a time.
THREE:That is a curious dress of yours, Monsieur, he replied, looking round the ball room:Poppo, the celebrated violinist, was also seized and dragged before the bloodthirsty comit de salut public.
TWO:The Emperor desired her to paint the portrait of the Empress, whom she represented standing in full court dress, with a crown of diamonds. Lisette used to declare that she was like a woman out of the Gospel, and that she was the only woman she knew whom no calumny ever attacked. One day she brought her two youngest sons to the sitting, the Grand Dukes Nicolas and Michael, then children. Of the Grand Duke Nicolas, afterwards Emperor, Mme. Le Brun declared that she had never seen a more beautiful child, and that she could paint from memory his face, which had all the characteristic beauty of Greece.
TWO:[109]One day she arrived, and after many bows and speeches began to address her prayers to the holy Virgin, and it appeared that what she asked for was in the first place a sum of eighteen hundred thousand livres for her husband, the Marchal, then the Order of the Garter, which he wanted because it was the only great order not possessed by his family, and finally the dipl?me of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, because it was the only title he did not already bear.
For some time Flicit had been wishing to obtain a place at court, and it had been suggested that she should be placed in the household of the comtesse de Provence, whose marriage with the second fils de France was about to take place.Nous savons nen douter pasWhen on the fte Sainte Catherine he gave a great banquet supposed to be in honour of the Empress, crystal cups full of diamonds were brought in at dessert, the diamonds being served in spoonsful to the ladies.
荣誉榜
THREE:The first time they entered it Mme. Du Barry said, It was in this room that Louis XV. used to [76] do me the honour to dine. There was a tribune above for the musicians who played and sang during dinner.In 1786-8 she had two daughters, Nomi and Clotilde, soon after whose birth the family had to mourn the loss of Mme. de Thsan, who died before she was five-and-twenty, and who was certainly, as events soon proved, taken away from the evil to come.
THREE:CHAPTER VIII
