TWO:The Marquis de , a proud, stern man of a reserved and apparently cold temperament, had a young wife whom he adored. Their married life went on prosperously for some years, at the end of which the young Marquise was seized with a fatal illness. When on her death-bed she confessed to her husband, who was nearly frantic with grief, that she had once, several years since, been unfaithful to him, that remorse in consequence had poisoned her happiness, and that she could not die in peace without his forgiveness. The Marquis consented to pardon her fault on condition that she would tell him the name of her seducer, which she did, after having extorted from her husband a solemn promise that he would not challenge him to a duel, as she feared the blood of one or the other might rest upon her soul.What a deliverance!
TWO:Monsieur de Beaumarchais, you could not have come at a more favourable moment; for I have had a very good night, I have a good digestion, and I never felt better than I do to-day. If you had made me such a proposal yesterday I should have had you thrown out of the window.
TWO:The Vicomte de Noailles was also proscribed, and fled to England, whence he kept writing to his wife to join him; but she would not leave her mother and grandmother.Potemkin cannot be judged as a commonplace favourite, exalted or destroyed by a caprice; he represented the ambition of Russia in the eighteenth century; after his death Catherine could never replace that splendid and supple intelligence. [47]
TWO:The one proposed for Louise was the second son of her uncle, the Marchal Mouchy de Noailles, a lad of sixteen, who bore the title of Vicomte de Noailles, and was in rank, fortune, and character an extremely suitable marriage for her.I have painted real princesses and they have never tormented or kept me waiting.