Well! Very well! But he has begun too low down, he will have no room for the legs.Louis XIV., to whom the idea of the people allowing the King to do anything he chose must have appeared ludicrous, replied that their love for their King would, indeed, be excessive if they would not bear him out of their sight, and ended by saying
ONE:But that of her daughter, who still lived in Paris, and who in 1819 was seized with a sudden illness which terminated fatally, was a terrible grief to her at the time; though in fact that selfish, heartless woman had for many years caused her nothing but vexation and sorrow, and it seems probable that after the first grief had subsided her life was happier without her, for the place she ought to have occupied had long been filled by the two nieces who were looked upon by her and by themselves as her daughtersher brothers only child, Mme. de Rivire, and Eugnie Le Brun, afterwards Mme. Tripier Le Franc.
TWO:The Count and Countess de Genlis accompanied the Duke and Duchess de Chartres to Bordeaux, where he embarked, after a naval review; and the Duchess proceeded on a tour in Italy. To Flicit this was a time of enchantment. The journeys at that time were adventurous, and the Cornice road was then an affair of difficulty if not danger. They went by sea to Nice, spent a week in that delicious climate, and determined to make what she called the perilous journey from Nice to Genoa. They [400] went on mules over the pass by Turbia, and found the Cornice as she says truly a cornicheso narrow that in some places they could hardly pass singly, and often they had to get down and walk. They slept at Ospedaletto, the Duchess, Flicit, and the Countess de Rully in one room; the Duchess on a bed made of the rugs of the mules, the others, on cloaks spread upon a great heap of corn. After six days of perils and fatigues, and what they called horrible precipices, they got to Genoa.
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ONE:The three young Orlans princes were, the Duc de Valois, afterwards Louis Philippe, the Duc de Montpensier, and the Comte de Beaujolais. The eldest was eight years old.
TWO:At the same time Tallien recognised the Marquise de Fontenay.
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ONE:Very different was the letter of M. de Sillery. He, at any rate, if he had been wrong and mistaken, was ready and willing to pay the penalty.
TWO:Yes, we are, replied the brothers.
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TWO:After a few months, however, finding that she did not become accustomed or reconciled to her surroundings, she resolved to go abroad again, and as she had never seen England she chose that country for her next wanderings, and set off in April, 1802, accompanied by a companion she had taken to live with her, named Adla?de, who soon became a dear and indispensable friend. She intended to spend only a few months in England, but as usual, when she arrived there, she soon made so much money and so many friends that she remained for three years, dividing her time between London and the country houses, where she was always welcome.It is difficult for those who are accustomed to think of Paris only as it is now, to picture to themselves at all what it was like in the eighteenth century; for until years after the Revolution it was, to all intents and purposes, a medi?val city.
FORE:Her nephews, Alexis and Alfred de Noailles came to see her, and she went down to Lagrange where the La Fayettes were restoring the chateau, planting and repairing. She soon got her name taken off the proscribed list, then those of her husband, her aunt, her father, her father-in-law, and various other friends, who soon arrived in Paris.She married, in 1788, the Marquis de Grammont.
FORE:Mme. de Puisieux was in tears on the staircase, and saw her come in with transports of joy. She had, for the first time since her widowhood, gone to supper with Mme. dEgmont, daughter of the Duc de Richelieu, close to whose h?tel there was a corps de garde, to which numbers of bodies had been brought. The next day was one of desolation, especially among the artisans and the people of the lower classes, most of whom had lost some relative or friend. Mme. de Genliss maid had to go to the [382] Morgue to identify the body of her sister; the ma?tre dh?tel lost a cousin. The place Louis XV., fated to be the scene of the murder of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and so many innocent victims, had been a scene of death and horror at the celebration of their wedding ftes. No wonder people said it was an unlucky beginning, especially those who were only too glad to find evils attending the Austrian marriage. [114]
FORE:Many cases there were of romantic devotion and loyalty, by which the property of a family had been partly saved for the owners by their faithful servants. Such was the story of the Marquis de , whose castle was burnt, and who with his wife perished in the flames. Their two boys managed to escape, but not together. One took refuge in England; the other in Germany, neither of them knowing of the existence of the other.
FORE:
FORE:She had a great wish to see this Empress, whose strange and commanding personality impressed her, besides which she was convinced that in Russia she would soon gain enough to complete the fortune she had resolved to make before returning to France.Because, if I spoke differently, he would denounce me to the Jacobins and have me guillotined.
FORE:Rashly they went to Paris in September, 1793, and were soon detained as suspected in their own house, where Father Carrichon, a priest, who in disguise carried on the work of his sacred calling, succeeded in visiting them frequently; and from the news he brought them they were before long [245] convinced that their lives would be sacrificed, and prepared with courage and resignation to meet their death.
FORE:The soldier burst into tears.
FORE:How it was possible, amidst the horrors and excesses going on throughout the land, to have such a delusion was incredible to Pauline; but the credulous infatuation of her husband was shared by Adrienne, who was delighted to get away from public life into the country, and proposed that they should stop with her sister on the way.Presently they observed a strange, ugly-looking man, who was watching them with a mocking smile.
TWO:THE society of the Palais Royal was at that time the most brilliant and witty in Paris, and she soon became quite at home there. The Comtesse de Blot, lady of honour to the Duchesse de Chartres, was pleasant enough when she was not trying to pose as a learned woman, at which times her long dissertations were tiresome and absurd; she was also ambitious, and what was worse, avaricious.At that moment Tallien, who had been sent to Bordeaux by the Revolutinary authorities, appeared upon the scene.
TWO:The interview closed to the mutual satisfaction of the King and his grandson, neither of them with the slightest idea of any more serious calamity than the quarrels at court between the Houses of Lorraine and Savoy being likely to interfere with the secure and magnificent tranquillity of their lives. But it wanted only eighteen years and a few months to the fall of the Bastille, and though the small-pox cut short the life of Louis XV. before the evil days, they were seen by many of his courtiers as old or older than himself.The day after to-morrow.
But with regard to dates Mme. de Genlis is exceedingly inaccurate; in fact her statements are sometimes impossible. For instance, she says that they left Mons the 13th of April, arriving at Schaffhausen on the 26th of May, and that their journey took seven days! Also that they arrived at Schaffhausen on the 26th of May, and then that they left that place for Zurich on May 6th ... and went to Zug May 14. At any rate they appear to have been there late in May. The Duchess [131] was then in the prison of the Luxembourg, and the Duke and his two younger sons were imprisoned at Marseilles.Pauline received a letter from Rosalie, written on the night of August 10th. They had left the h?tel de Noailles, which was too dangerous, and were living in concealment. My father, wrote Rosalie, only left the King at the threshold of the Assembly, and has returned to us safe and sound ... but I had no news of M. de Grammont till nine oclock in the evening.... I got a note from my husband telling me he was safe (he had hidden in a chimney). Half an hour later he arrived himself.... I hasten to write to you at the close of this terrible day....IT will not be possible in a biography so short as this, to give a detailed account of the wandering, adventurous life led by Mme. de Genlis after the severance of her connection with the Orlans family.She had a large picture painted by Boucher, in which all her grandnephews were represented as Cupids, with nothing on but the Order of the Grand Cross of Malta, to show their right to belong to it. None of the family could look at or speak of it with gravity. But what was a more serious matter was her passion for stealing relics and objects of religious value. She even mixed one into a medicine for her son, the Duc dAyen, when he had the measles. This had been lent her by some nuns, who of course could never get it back again. The nuns were very angry, so were the Archbishop of Paris and the Bishop of Chartres; she had also stolen a beautiful chalice and they refused to give her the Holy Communion. Her [177] family were much disturbed and had considerable trouble in getting her out of the difficulties and trying to hush up the affair.Mme. de Genlis, however, found an opportunity of writing to the Duchess of Orlans in France; the Duke was by this time arrested.