When the Comtesse de Custine died, after a short illness, her husband was away with his regiment, and did not arrive in time to see her alive. During the first days of his despair, while looking over her papers, he came upon a packet of letters which proved beyond all doubt the infamous treachery of the Vicomte, who had made his pretended love for Mme. de Genlis a shield to hide his real passion for his brothers wife, which had been the horror and torment of her life, and which she had dreaded to reveal to her husband, whose temper was violent when aroused.
It was said by his illegitimate brothers, MM. de Saint-Far and Saint-Albin, to have begun on a certain evening when a quadrille arranged by Mme. de Genlis, in which each couple represented proverbs, went to the Opera ball, as the custom of those days permitted, and was suddenly disarranged by an enormous cat, which, mewing and clawing, rolled itself suddenly into the midst of the dancers. The cat proved to be a little Savoyard boy, dressed up in fur, dreadfully frightened at the abuse and kicks he received.Au mme prix qui ne?t t po?te?She came to the wedding with the son and daughter of her second marriage; the latter was afterwards the celebrated Mme. de Montesson. But she managed permanently to cheat her elder daughter out of nearly the whole of the property of her father, and always behaved to her and to her children with the most heartless cruelty.As she left Belgium, Mme. Genlis who, with her faults had also many good qualities, began, she says, to reflect upon the horror of her position.But with regard to dates Mme. de Genlis is exceedingly inaccurate; in fact her statements are sometimes impossible. For instance, she says that they left Mons the 13th of April, arriving at Schaffhausen on the 26th of May, and that their journey took seven days! Also that they arrived at Schaffhausen on the 26th of May, and then that they left that place for Zurich on May 6th ... and went to Zug May 14. At any rate they appear to have been there late in May. The Duchess [131] was then in the prison of the Luxembourg, and the Duke and his two younger sons were imprisoned at Marseilles.