After being tormented and persecuted for some time, Mme. Le Brun yielded, gave her consent, obtained that of M. Le Brun, and provided a handsome dot, trousseau, and jewels for the intolerable girl, who did not show the slightest gratitude or affection to her mother, but behaved throughout in the most insolent, heartless manner.
The Duc dAyen, though always retaining a deep affection for his wife, spent a great part of his time away from her. He was one of the most conspicuous and brilliant figures at the court, and besides entering eagerly into all its pleasures, dissipation, and extravagance, was a member of the Academy of Science; and although by no means an atheist or an enemy of religion, associated constantly with the philosophers, whose ideas [164] and opinions he, like many of the French nobles in the years preceding the Revolution, had partly adopted, little imagining the terrible consequences that would result from them.
Director
One cannot help seeing in the sentiments expressed and the manner of expressing them, the artificial, affected tone which with Mme. de Genlis had become her second nature, and which she had evidently inculcated into her daughter.The crimes and horrors of the Revolution had now reached their climax. Paris was a scene of blood and terror. No ones life was safe for an hour, houses were closed, the streets, once so full of life and gaiety, were now paraded by gangs of drunken ruffians, men and women, bent on murder and plunder, or re-echoed to the roll of the tumbrils carrying victims to the scaffold. The prisons were crammed, and yet arrests went on every day. The King, the Queen, and the gentle, saintly Madame Elizabeth, had been murdered; the unfortunate Dauphin, now Louis XVII., and his sister were kept in cruel captivity.With much confusion she replied that she had not had time to have a proper dress made, but she was aware of the impossibility of explaining why, coming straight from Vienna, she had not brought one with her; and the dissatisfied looks of the Ambassadress increased her alarm when it was time to go to the Empress.No.Never, she afterwards remarked, had she seen so many pretty women together as in the salon of Mme. de Thoum; but what surprised her was that most of them did needlework sitting round a large table all the evening. They would also knit in their boxes at the opera; but it was explained that this was for charity. In other respects she found society at Vienna very much the same as at Paris before the advent of the Revolution.