ONE:They had systematically augmented his suspicions till they induced him to sign an order for the arrest of the Empress, the Tsarevitch, and the Grand Duke Constantine, and this document they showed the Tsarevitch, saying: You see that your father is mad, and you will all be lost unless we prevent it by shutting him up instead.
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ONE:The attraction he felt for Mme. de Genlis, which had such a powerful influence upon her life and so disastrous an effect upon her reputation, had not begun when she first took up her abode at the Palais Royal.
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ONE:Eh! Madame, cried the Queen impatiently, spare us ceremonial in the face of nature.She had only to choose amongst the great personages who wanted their portraits painted; and she spent the time when she was not working in wandering amid the scenes to visit which had been the dream of her life. Ruins of temples, baths, acqueducts, tombs, and monuments of the vanished Empire, gorgeous churches and palaces of the Renaissance, huge never-ending galleries of statues and pictures, the glories of Greek and of medi?val art; Phidias and Praxiteles, Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo; the picturesque beauty of Rome, as it was then, the delicious gardens, since swept away by the greedy vandalism of their owners; the mighty Colosseum; the solemn desolate Campagna; all filled her mind and imagination and distracted her thoughts from France and the horrors going on there. At Rome in those days there certainly seemed to be everything that could be wished for to make life a paradise upon earth. Besides the natural beauty, the historical and arch?ological interest, and the treasures of art, the magnificence of the ecclesiastical functions, church services, stately processions, and entrancing music were a perpetual delight to her. There is no city in the world, she wrote to a [96] friend, in which one could pass ones time so deliciously as in Rome, even if one were deprived of all the resources of good society.
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ONE:[93]
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ONE:CHAPTER VIIThe scarcity of women at that time and the enormous number of soldiers of all ranks gave that impression to one used to the brilliant Russian court.
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