THREE:Suddenly a shrill voice was heard from the altar, [178] saying, Mme. la Marchale, you will not have the eighteen hundred thousand francs that you ask for your husband, he has already one hundred thousand cus de rente, and that is enough; he is already Duke, Peer, Grandee of Spain, and Marshal of France; he has already the orders of the Saint-Esprit and the Golden Fleece; your family is loaded with the favours of the court; if you are not content it is because it is impossible to satisfy you; and I advise you to renounce becoming a princess of the Empire. Your husband will not have the garter of St. George either.The Marquis de Paroy, a royalist, whose father, a Girondist, had just been arrested, wrote to ask for an interview, sending an illustrated petition, in the taste of the day, to the goddess of Bordeaux, with a Cupid he called a sans-culotte, &c. Having received an invitation, he went to her house, where, in the ante-rooms, crowds were waiting with petitions in their hands. Presently folding doors were thrown open and Trzia appeared, exquisitely dressed, asked for the citoyen Paroy, and invited [312] him to come into her boudoir, which was filled with the traces of her pursuits. Music was upon the open piano, a guitar lay upon a sofa, a harp stood in a corner of the room, an easel, a half-sketched-out miniature, a table covered with drawings, colours, and brushes, an embroidery frame, a writing table piled with petitions, notes, and papers. After the first greeting she said
