When the Empress returned from Czarskoiesolo she desired Mme. Le Brun to paint the portraits of the Grand Duchesses Alexandrine and Helena, daughters of the Tsarevitch, then fourteen and thirteen years old, and afterwards that of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, wife of Alexander, eldest grandson of the Empress, the young girl she had [134] seen on her first visit to Czarskoiesolo, by whom she was completely fascinated.
FORE:Then the Comte dArtois insisted on having a [204] place of the same kind, and on its being made and finished in a week; which at enormous expense he succeeded in accomplishing, besides winning from the Queen a bet of 100,000 francs made upon the subject.Soon after his accession the young Marquise de Pracontal, who was very pretty, very dvote, and very timid, was presented to Louis XVI., who kissed her with such fervour on one cheek that she was dreadfully embarrassed and frightened; and was just going to kiss her other cheek, when the Duc dAumont threw himself between them, exclaiming in consternation that she was not a duchess.
ONE:It was time. The day before they left a stone was thrown in at the window just where Mademoiselle dOrlans had been sitting; if it had struck her it might have killed her. It struck her hat which she had hung on the top of a chair. A shower of stones followed, breaking the windows and arousing the Duc de Chartres and their only manservant, who [447] had gone to bed, and who rushed out into the garden, but only in time to hear the hurrying foot-steps of the escaping rascals.
TWO:
THREE:Flicit recovered, and went to Spa, and to travel in Belgium. After her return, as she was walking one day in the Palais Royal gardens, she met a young girl with a woman of seven or eight and thirty, who stopped and gazed at her with an earnest look. Suddenly she exclaimedAnd she turned away, leaving the soldier in tears.
FORE:
It was difficult to make the postillions stop, but after a time Darnal forced them to do so, assisted by the cries of the terrified travellers who were then passing through a village. The strange servant did nothing. They got out, and on asking how far they were from Dartford they were told twenty-two miles.She declared that she would have resigned before had it not been for the calumnies, injustice, and persecution (!) carried on against the Duc dOrlans; she hoped his return would dispel the clouds; she pictured the grief her pupils would feel, &c., &c.In April, 1794, they were sent to the Luxembourg where they found the de Mouchy, who had been there five months, and who were lodged in a room over the one in which the Marchale de Mouchy was born. They had also been married at that palace. The three de Noailles were put in the room above them.
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