ONE:She took no notice of her toilette, expressed her deep satisfaction at her arrival in Russia, hoped she would be happy and stay there a long time, and ordered an apartment in the palace to be prepared for her during the rest of the summer.Conduct yourself properly, said he; you will make a great marriage. Being colonel at your age, you have a splendid military career before you, and as I look upon you as my son I will get the King to make Sillery into a duchy on the occasion of your marriage.
TWO:All that country, Frascati, LAriccia, Castel Gandolfo, Albano, Gensano, is a dream of beauty and romance. Lakes, mountains, and forests, picturesque towns and villages perched high upon the steep sides of precipices, rocks crowned with ruined towers or convents, ancient villas like huge palaces, with colonnades, fountains, and loggie, buried among deep woods of ilex and chestnut, in whose cool shade they could spend the bright, hot, glowing days.
ONE:Another place at which she liked staying was Gennevilliers, which belonged to the Comte de Vaudreuil, a great friend of hers, and one of the subjects of malicious gossip about her. Gennevilliers was not so picturesque as the other places, but there was an excellent private theatre. The Comte dArtois and all his society always came to the representations there.
TWO:The prisons are blind, then, retorted Trzia; for both at Paris and here true republicans are groaning in fetters.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.
ONE:Et Lisette les coutait.After her proceedings at the Bastille and the Cordeliers, and considering her connection with the revolutionary party, Mme. de Genlis (or Sillery, as she was also called) need not have expressed the surprise and indignation she did at the arrival of a body of police to search her house for arms, reported to be stored there. They were sent by La Fayette, who had done even more mischief than she had; but for some reason they did not like each other. The touchy, conceited Republican poet, Marie Joseph Chnier, who ranted against religion, royalty, and everything and everybody superior to himself, began to make love to Mme. de Genlis, and when she objected to his impertinent familiarity, said furiously: You are right; I am [418] neither a grand seigneur nor a duke!which specimen of the manners of her party disgusted her extremely. In her Mmoires she relates of this worthy that he was accused of having participated in the condemnation of his brother Andr, also a poet, executed under the Terror. This was, however, almost certainly untrue, but it was said that he could have saved him if he had made use of the influence he possessed with the Terrorists, but that he either feared or did not care to do so. The celebrated actress, Mlle. Dumesnil, then old and infirm, received one day a visit from him, during which he tormented her to recite something for him. She was ill in bed, but nevertheless he went on begging that she would recite only one line that he might say he had heard her, when, turning towards him with a violent effort she said
TWO:For the only consolation was that now the monsters were turning on each other; there were, in fact, more republicans than royalists in the [327] prisons. Every now and then some blood-stained miscreant was brought in amongst those whose homes he had wrecked, whose dear ones he had murdered, and whose fate he was now to share; while all shrunk in horror from him, or mocked and triumphed as he passed. When Chaumette, the high priest of the Revolution, one of the most blasphemous and blood-stained wretches of all, was brought to the Luxembourg, the prisoners would look through the little guichet where he was shut up, asking each other, Have you seen the wolf?
