Mme. de Genlis had taken rooms close to the Chauss dAntin, and began to look after her affairs, which were in a most dilapidated state. Nearly all the property she left at Belle Chasse had been confiscated, she could not get her jointure paid by the persons who had got hold of it, and though Sillery had been inherited by Mme. de Valence, to whom she had given up all her own share in it, Mme. de Valence had let her spendthrift husband waste the fortune and afterwards sell the estate to a General who married one of his daughters, and who partly pulled down the chateau and spoiled the place.
ONE:Far from being forced, as formerly, to keep in the background her marriage with the Duke of Orlans, it was for that very reason that she was high in the favour of the First Consul and the more en vidence she made it, the better it was for her.
TWO:Little did the other children who made complaints that their books were spoiled, or the nuns [16] who gave reproofs and decreed punishments, imagine what valuable possessions these scribbled, spoilt books and papers would have become in future years if they had taken care of them, for the artistic genius was in them even then. One evening, when she was seven or eight years old, the child drew the head of a man with a beard which she showed to her father. Transported with delight, he exclaimed:Flicit and her mother took refuge in an apartment lent them by a friend in a Carmelite convent in the rue Cassette, where they received the visits of different friends in the parloir. Amongst the most assiduous was the Baron dAndlau, a friend of the late M. de Saint-Aubin, a man of sixty, very rich and of a distinguished family. He wished to marry Flicit, who refused him, but so great were the advantages of such an alliance that her mother desired her to reconsider the matter. As she still declined, he turned his attentions to her mother, and married her at the end of a year and a half.
THREE:At a concert in Milan she made the acquaintance of the Countess Bistri, a beautiful Pole, who was also going to Vienna with her husband. They arranged to travel together, and this was the beginning of a long and intimate friendship.
TWO:Louis, however, was more selfish and indifferent than cruel. He was by no means like Frederic William of Prussia, a savage to his family and his subjects, or like three out of the four Georges of England, who were not only outrageously immoral themselves, but brutal tyrants to their wives [5] and bitter enemies of their parents and children.With the deepest reluctance Louis XVIII. yielded to what he was assured to be an absolute necessity and allowed, as Napoleon had found it necessary to allow, more than one even of the regicides, who had survived and were powerful, to hold office during his reign. Their powerful support was declared to be indispensable to the safety of the monarchy, and the union of parties which he hoped to achieve.
TWO:Isabey bought boxes full of little dolls, masses of materials and pins; dressed them all from the Empress to the last page, and after working two days and nights went to the Tuileries.
Capital letter EIn Heavens name dont marry him, cried the Duchess. You will be miserable.Qui va nous ramener en FranceSaturdayof Messidor! he exclaimed, when ordering the Moniteur to be dated on a certain day. We shall be laughed at! But I will do away with the Messidor! I will efface all the inventions of the Jacobins! [109]
荣誉榜
THREE:In fact she had given her whole heart to her work. She thought and dreamed of nothing but painting, her career as an artist was her life, and her affection for her mother, her brother, and her friends sufficed for her domestic happiness; she wanted neither love intrigues nor even marriage to disturb the state of things she found so entirely satisfactory.Pauline and her aunt were extremely fond of each other, though their ideas did not agree at all. Mme. de Tess adored La Fayette, and the deplorable result of his theories from which they were all suffering so severely did not prevent her admiring them.
THREE:Mme. de Genlis some time afterwards married her niece, Henriette de Sercey, to a rich merchant in Hamburg, after which she went to Berlin, but where she was denounced to the King, accused, without truth, of receiving the Abb de Sieys, then in Berlin, and ordered to leave the Prussian territory.
