In the streets people recognised their own carriages turned into hackney coaches; the shops were full of their things; books with their arms, china, furniture, portraits of their relations, who had perhaps perished on the scaffold. Walking along the boulevard one day soon after her return to Paris she stopped at a shop, and on leaving her address, the lad who was serving her exclaimed
Mme. de Boufflers, Mme. de Sabran, and their families, on the other hand, were always assiduous in their attentions to her, and would refuse other invitations to go to her.Marat?Josphine, now the wife of Napoleon, and head of society in Paris, had not forgotten her, and was anxious to receive her at court, but this Napoleon would not allow, greatly to the disappointment and sorrow of them both.
TWO:Besides the immense number of her friends and acquaintance of later years, she kept up faithfully those of her early days. Her old fellow student, Mlle. Boquet, had given up the profession in which she was getting on so well, and married a M. Filleul, whom the Queen had made her concierge de la Muette. [31]
I knew it, replied Fronsac, and passed on.The people had had enough; they were tired of blood and murder. Even before Thermidor they had begun to murmur as the cars of victims passed through the streets; a reaction had begun.The Empress was not in the least like what she had imagined. Short and stout, though exceedingly dignified, her white hair was raised high above her forehead, her face, still handsome, expressed the power and genius which characterised her commanding personality, her eyes and her voice were gentle, and her hands extremely beautiful. She had taken off one of her gloves, expecting the usual [126] salute, but Lisette had forgotten all about it till afterwards when the Ambassador asked, to her dismay, if she had remembered to kiss the hand of the Empress.