Paris seemed to be awaking into life again; the streets were more animated, the people to be seen in them were more numerous and did not all look either brutal or terror-stricken. Art, literature, and social gaiety began to revive.
FORE:The Princess had therefore, as soon as she could get away from Austria, joined her uncles and aunts and married the Duc dAngoulme, concentrating all her affection upon those remaining members of her family, who received her with the deepest joy and tenderness.In all those terrible days she was the only woman whose courage failed at the last. She cried and entreated for help from the crowd around the scaffold, and that crowd began to be so moved by her terror and despair that the execution was hurried on lest they should interfere to prevent it.
ONE:Run quick and fetch him and take him to his parents. I shall not go to bed till you tell me he is safe at home.Very often in the mornings the two girls went together to the artist Briard, who had a studio in the Louvre, and who, though an indifferent painter, drew well, and had several other young girls as pupils.
TWO:It was time. The day before they left a stone was thrown in at the window just where Mademoiselle dOrlans had been sitting; if it had struck her it might have killed her. It struck her hat which she had hung on the top of a chair. A shower of stones followed, breaking the windows and arousing the Duc de Chartres and their only manservant, who [447] had gone to bed, and who rushed out into the garden, but only in time to hear the hurrying foot-steps of the escaping rascals.The latter part of the sojourn of Mme. de Genlis in England was overshadowed by anxieties, annoyances, and fears.
THREE:After the death of her eldest boy, the sight of this picture so affected the Queen that she had it removed, taking care to explain to Mme. Le Brun that this was done only because she could not bear to see it, as it so vividly recalled the child whose loss was at that time such a terrible grief to her.She now painted the whole day except when on Sundays she received in her studio the numbers of people, from the Imperial family downwards, who came to see her portraits; to which she had added a new and great attraction, for she had caused to be sent from Paris her great picture of Marie Antoinette in a blue velvet dress, which excited the deepest interest. The Prince de Cond, when he came to see it, could not speak, but looked at it and burst into tears.
FORE:
Meanwhile, she and M. de Genlis had fallen in love with each other, and resolved to marry. As he had neither father nor mother, there was nobody whose consent he was absolutely bound to ask; but a powerful relation, M. de Puisieux, who was the head of his family, had already, with his consent, begun to negotiate his marriage with a rich young girl. Instead of telling M. de Puisieux the state of the case while there was still time to retire without difficulty, M. de Genlis said nothing, but proposed that they should at once marry secretly, to which neither Flicit nor her relations seem to have made any objection. She had no money, and had [367] refused all the marriages proposed to her; here was a man she did like, and who was in all respects unexceptionable, only that he was not well off. But his connections were so brilliant and influential that they could soon put that right, and it was agreed that the marriage should take place from the house of the Marquise de Sercey.The Marquis de , a proud, stern man of a reserved and apparently cold temperament, had a young wife whom he adored. Their married life went on prosperously for some years, at the end of which the young Marquise was seized with a fatal illness. When on her death-bed she confessed to her husband, who was nearly frantic with grief, that she had once, several years since, been unfaithful to him, that remorse in consequence had poisoned her happiness, and that she could not die in peace without his forgiveness. The Marquis consented to pardon her fault on condition that she would tell him the name of her seducer, which she did, after having extorted from her husband a solemn promise that he would not challenge him to a duel, as she feared the blood of one or the other might rest upon her soul.Lisette was at home with her daughter, who was just recovering from an illness, when the news was brought to her.She was still very young when her father sent her to Paris with her brothers to complete their education, in the charge of an old abb, their tutor, but to be also under the care of the Marquis de Boisgeloup and his wife, old friends of their father, in whose family they were to live. When they arrived they found that the Marquis de Boisgeloup, Seigneur de la Mancelive and conseiller du Roi et du parlement, had just died.Well; what do you want?Mme. Le Brun, alluding to this circumstance, [78] remarks that in all probability the very heroism and calmness of the victims helped to prolong this horrible state of things.In the streets people recognised their own carriages turned into hackney coaches; the shops were full of their things; books with their arms, china, furniture, portraits of their relations, who had perhaps perished on the scaffold. Walking along the boulevard one day soon after her return to Paris she stopped at a shop, and on leaving her address, the lad who was serving her exclaimed
$120
$340
$250
$378
$428
