Saturdayof Messidor! he exclaimed, when ordering the Moniteur to be dated on a certain day. We shall be laughed at! But I will do away with the Messidor! I will efface all the inventions of the Jacobins! [109]
One day, while she was sitting to Mme. Le Brun, Mme. S asked her to lend her carriage to her that evening to go to the theatre. Mme. Le Brun consented, but when she ordered the carriage next morning at eleven oclock she was told that neither carriage, horses, nor coachman had come back. She sent at once to Mme. S, who had passed the night at the h?tel des Finances and had not yet returned. It was not for some days that Mme. Le Brun made this discovery by means of her coachman, who had been bribed to keep silent, but [68] had nevertheless told the story to several persons in the house.When the Bastille was destroyed, and the officers who were accused of nothing but defending the post entrusted to them were murdered, that prison [324] contained seven prisoners, of whom one was detained by the request of his family, four were forgers, one was an idiot, the other unknown. [102]There had been no disunion or quarrel between her and the Comte de Genlis; they had always been attached to one another, and no break occurred between them; she continued to be devotedly loved by Mme. de Puisieux, whose death she now had to lament.
Director
He was extremely kind to Mme. Le Brun, whom he always called ma bonne amie; she was often at his house, though she did not care for the great dinners of never less than thirty people, which were always at seven oclockin those days considered a late hour.Les vertus sont pied, le vice est cheval.She now painted the whole day except when on Sundays she received in her studio the numbers of people, from the Imperial family downwards, who came to see her portraits; to which she had added a new and great attraction, for she had caused to be sent from Paris her great picture of Marie Antoinette in a blue velvet dress, which excited the deepest interest. The Prince de Cond, when he came to see it, could not speak, but looked at it and burst into tears.It was not until the 5th of October that the places in the diligence could be had, and on the evening of the 4th Lisette went to say goodbye to her mother, whom she had not seen for three weeks, and who at first did not recognise her, so much had she changed in that short time and so ill did she look.