The story of her exile is indeed a contrast to that of Mme. Le Brun, who, with none of her advantages of rank and fortune, nothing but her own genius, stainless character, and charming personality, was welcomed, fted, and loved in nearly every court in Europe, whose exile was one long triumphant progress, and who found friends and a home wherever she went.
Flicits mother was the daughter of a most odious woman.The pavilion of Mme. Du Barry had been sacked by the Revolutionists, only the walls were standing, while the palaces of Marly, Sceaux, and Bellevue had entirely disappeared.
FORE:She would not have her portrait done, saying that she was very sorry to refuse her aunts, but as she had renounced the world she could not have her picture taken. She had cut her hair short and her dress was very simple. The King looked nearly as pale and thin.Twice a week at a certain hour she went on pretence of taking the air to a place from whence she could see her three children, whom their tutor, devoted to her and her family, brought into the garden below. Now and then she received and sent notes to and from him, by one of which they [246] learnt that Adrienne was in the prison called Plessis, one of the worst.
Mme. Vige, or rather Mme. le Svre, had certainly, by her obstinate folly, succeeded in ruining first her own life, then her daughters; for the two deplorable marriages she had arranged, both of them entirely for mercenary reasons, had turned out as badly as possible. Her own was the worst, as the husband she had chosen was the more odious of the two men, and she had no means of escaping from him; but Lisettes was disastrous enough.Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin,Flicit composed some verses all about flowers and friendship, which were pronounced to be very touching, and which she sang dressed up as a shepherdess, having first presented him with a bouquet. She next appeared in a Spanish costume singing a romance composed by her mother, and finally she played the harp, which seems to come in like a chorus throughout all her eventful life.I know neither the Montagne nor the Gironde. I know the people, and I love and serve them. Give me a serge dress and I will go to the hospitals and nurse the sick patriots.In spite of his friendships with the leaders of the Revolution, his adoption at first of many of their ideas, and the fte Constitutionelle he gave in their honour, M. de Fontenay, like many others, began to see that things were going much further than he expected or wished. He was neither a young, foolish, generous enthusiast like La Fayette, de Sgur, de Noailles, and their set, nor a low ruffian thirsting for plunder and bloodshed, nor a penniless adventurer with everything to gain and nothing to lose; but an elderly man of rank, fortune, and knowledge of the world, who, however he might have tampered with the philosophers and revolutionists, as it was the fashion to do, had no sort of illusions about them, no sympathy whatever with their plans, and the greatest possible objection to being deprived of his title of Marquis, his property, or his life. In fact, he began to consider [289] whether it would not be more prudent to leave the country and join M. Cabarrus in Spain, for he was not separated from his wife, nor was there any open disagreement between them. They simply seem to have taken their own ways, which were not likely to have been the same. Trzia was then much more inclined to the Revolution than her husband, believing with all the credulity of youth in the happiness and prosperity it was to establish. Of her life during 1791 and the first part of 1792 little or nothing is known with any certainty, though Mme. dAbrants relates an anecdote told by a Colonel La Mothe which points to her being in Bordeaux, living or staying with her brother, M. Cabarrus, and an uncle, M. Jalabert, a banker, each of whom watched her with all the jealousy of a Spanish duenna, the brother being at the same time so disagreeable that it was almost impossible to be in his company without quarrelling with him.
