Some weeks after their marriage the Comte de Genlis had to rejoin his regiment, which was at Nancy, and as it was then not the custom for officers wives to accompany them, and he thought Flicit too young to be left by herself at a court such as that of Louis XV., he decided to take an apartment for her at Origny, in a convent where he had relations, as people often did in such cases.
As M. de Genlis was with his regiment, she went with a friend, the Marquise de Brugnon, who was also young and pretty, MM. de Bouzolle and de Nedonchel. A room had been lent them on the ground floor of a new house from which to see the fte, and, fearing there would be a great crowd, they arrived directly after dinner. There was some delay before the fireworks began, and Flicit, who was, with all her talents, very often extremely silly and affected, declared that she had waited so long she did not care to see the fireworks, and persisted in keeping her eyes shut until they were over.Mme. Adla?de, tonne dun tel propos rpond sur le mme air:
ONE:The Queen, Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, ex-King of Poland, was a harmless, uninteresting woman, who had no ambition, no talent, no influence, and a great many children.
THREE:Thats true; but I dont like him any the better for that, the wretch! Ah, I hate him! how I hate him! how I hate him! But there he is coming back, so I shall begin again! And so he did. [93]
THREE:Balls were not then the crushes they afterwards became. The company was not nearly so numerous; there was plenty of room for those who were not [54] dancing to see and hear what was going on. Mme. Le Brun, however, never cared for dancing, but preferred the houses where music, acting, or conversation were the amusements. One of her favourite salons was that of the charg daffaires of Saxony, M. de Rivire, whose daughter had married her brother Louis Vige. He and her sister-in-law were constantly at her house. Mme. Vige acted very well, was a good musician, and extremely pretty. Louis Vige was also a good amateur actor; no bad or indifferent acting would have been tolerated in the charades and private theatricals in which Talma, Larive, and Le Kain also took part.For Gods sake, hold your tongue and let me pass, said the Chevalier in a low voice. My life depends upon it. Do you hear? do you understand? I have just escaped from prison; I am condemned to death. If you hold your tongue and let me pass I am saved, but if you keep me and call out my name you will kill me.
[31]Je veux achever ma journe.Trzia became a power in Bordeaux. She appeared everywhere in public wearing those scanty Greek draperies so well calculated to display the perfection of her beauty; affecting the attitude of the Goddess of Liberty, with a pike in one hand and the other resting upon the shoulder of Tallien. [309] The populace cheered as she drove about Bordeaux in a magnificent carriage which, had it belonged to a royalist, would have excited their rage. She harangued the Convention with bombastic speeches about women and virtue and modesty, which, to persons not besotted with frantic republicanism, must appear singularly out of place; mingling her exhortations with flattery so fulsome and preposterous that she did not fail to command sympathetic acclamations, especially when she said that she was not twenty years old and that she was a mother but no longer a wife.
