FORE:It was fixed, therefore, for the 8th of December; Rosalie helped her sister with all the necessary purchases and packing, so that the servants might not discover where she was going, and, on the morning of the day before their parting, the two sisters went at the break of day through the falling snow to receive the Communion at a secret Oratory, going a long way round for fear their footprints in the snow should betray them. The day was spent in finishing their preparations, and after her child was in bed Pauline wrote her farewell to her mother and eldest sister. The night was far advanced when the letters were finished, and her eyes still bore traces of tears when, before morning dawned, she rose and prepared to start.

FORE:Next morning she escaped to St. Germain, and then to Paris, leaving Joseph to take what care he could of her property, but the wine was all drunk out of the cellar, the garden and courtyard ravaged, and the house ransacked. To all remonstrances the Prussians replied that the French had [156] done much worse things in Germany; which was true enough.The marriage took place in February, 1755, when the cold was so intense that the navigation of the Seine was stopped by the ice, which at that time, when traffic was carried on chiefly by means of the rivers, was a serious inconvenience. [51] After the wedding the Comte and Comtesse d��Ayen went to live with his parents at the stately h?tel de [163] Noailles, now degraded into the h?tel St. James, while the vast, shady gardens that surrounded it [52] have long disappeared; shops and houses covering the ground where terraces, fountains, beds of flowers, and masses of tall trees then formed a scene of enchantment.