TWO:Much older than the unfortunate Queen of France, and possessing neither her beauty nor charm, Mme. Le Brun did not take a fancy to her, although she received her very well. She was a strange person, with masculine manners and habits; her great pleasure apparently was riding. Very pale and thin, wearing deep mourning for her brother, the Emperor Joseph II., even her rooms being hung with black, she gave the impression almost of a spectre or a shadow.
TWO:We started the next morning; M. le Duc gave me his arm to the carriage; I was much agitated, Mademoiselle burst into tears, her father was pale and trembling. When I was in the carriage he stood in silence by the door with his eyes fixed upon me; his gloomy, sorrowful look seeming to implore pity.
TWO:Mesdames Adla?de and Victoire set off early in 1791. Their whole journey was a perpetual danger. After getting their passports signed with difficulty by the Commune, they were denounced at Svres by a maid-servant, stopped by the Jacobins and accused of being concerned in plots and of taking money out of the country, and detained for a fortnight, when they managed to get permission to go on, and left at 10 oclock on a Saturday night, arriving on Sunday morning at Fontainebleau, where they were again stopped and threatened by the mob, who were just going to be joined by the gardes nationaux when a hundred Chasseurs de Lorraine, luckily quartered there, charged the mob, opened the gates, and passed the carriages on. At Arnay-le-Duc they were detained for eleven days, and only allowed to proceed when the Comte de Narbonne appeared with a permission extorted by [108] Mirabeau from the revolutionary government at Paris.In all her life she never lost the recollection of the enchantment of that day, and many years later, in her altered surroundings, would say to her children, Ah! that day was the fte de ma jeunesse!
TWO:Overcome with grief at this terrible news, and filled with self-reproach for the peaceful happiness of her own life, the solitude of the place became insupportable, and she at once returned to Turin.
