THREE:Among the Palais Royal set, it was the fashion to find fault with everything done by the royalists, to go as seldom as possible to Versailles and to pretend to find it a great bore when it was necessary to do so.Mme. Le Brun found Lady Hamilton, as she became shortly afterwardsthough extraordinarily beautifulignorant, ill-dressed, without esprit or conversation, ill-natured, and spiteful in her way of talking about other people, the only topic she seemed capable of discussing. She herself enjoyed Naples, as she did every other pleasant episode in her delightful life. From the loggia opening out of her bedroom she looked down into an orange garden; from her windows she could see constantly some picturesque or beautiful scene. The costumes of the washerwomen who gathered round the fountain, peasant girls dancing the tarantella, the fiery torches of the fishermen scattered over the bay at night, all the life and colour and incident of southern life spread like a panorama before her; and often she would go out in a boat by moonlight or starlight upon the calm sea, looking back upon the town rising like an amphitheatre from the waters edge.
