Madame Buonaparte came to see her, recalled the balls at which they had met before the Revolution, and asked her to come some day to breakfast with the First Consul. But Mme. Le Brun did not like the family or surroundings of the Buonaparte, differing so entirely as they did from the society in which she had always lived, and did not receive with much enthusiasm this invitation which was never repeated.[444]
FORE:Sadly she returned to Aix-la-Chapelle, where the news which she had heard at Lige of the September [233] massacres had already arrived, and where, besides their own horror and grief, the emigrs had to listen to the disgust and contempt everywhere expressed by those of other nations for a country in which such atrocities could be perpetuated without the slightest resistance.
ONE:Why?I have just had a letter from my husband, she said; he tells me that they have put me on the list of emigrs. I shall lose my eight hundred francs de rente, but I console myself for that, as there I am on the list of respectable people.
TWO:Another and more reprehensible episode took place when the Comte dArtois, then a lad of sixteen, was just going to be married to the younger sister of the Comtesse de Provence, daughter of the King of Sardinia.
THREE:The Comtesse dAdhmar, who held a post in the Queens household, received one day a note from the Duchesse de Polignac, Governess of the Children of France, asking her to go with her to consult a fortune-teller of whom every one was talking. For many persons who declined to believe in God were ready and eager to put confidence in witchcraft, fortune-telling, spiritualism, or any other form of occult proceedings.
FORE:
The Comtesse de Noailles was a most unfortunate choice to have made for the post in question; for although a woman of the highest character, religious, charitable, and honourable, she was so stiff, precise, [187] and absolutely the slave of every detail of court etiquette that she only tormented and estranged the young girl, who was ready to be conciliated, and whom she might have influenced and helped. The Dauphine, however, an impetuous, thoughtless girl of fifteen, accustomed to the freedom of her own family life at the court of Vienna, hated and ridiculed the absurd restrictions of the French Court, called the Countess Madame lEtiquette, and took her own way.To Lisette she seemed to be about a hundred years of age, though she was not really very old, but her costume, a dark grey dress and a cap over which she wore a large hood tied under her chin, and her bent figure, increased the appearance of age.Courage, Monsieur le Marchal!On hearing that they were, he remarked
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