But amidst all this professional and social prosperity Mme. Le Brun was now to experience two severe domestic sorrows, one of which was the loss of her mother, of whose death her brother sent her the news from France. The other, related to her daughter, was entirely owing to her own infatuated folly, and was not at all surprising.
Approchez-vous, Nron, et prenez votre place!But the woods, the meadows, the Seine, and the general beauty of the landscape delighted Mme. Le Brun, who, after all her wanderings, began to have a longing for rest, became more and more attached to her home as the years passed, and spent more and more of her time there.
FORE:Madame, he replied, that man is the friend of the State, which is the only thing that ought to be considered.But they were very little edified by what they [72] heard and saw. The Abb Maury was speaking, and the outrageous behaviour, the rows and quarrels, the discreditable manner in which the discussions were carried on, so shocked them that they allowed their disgust to be more apparent than was prudent.
FORE:M. de Montbel had waited for nearly an hour, when suddenly a suspicion seized him. Springing [276] up suddenly he ran to the cottage, opened the door of one room, then another, then a third, and stood still with a cry of consternation.
ONE:And what could be more contradictory to the jargon about Nature, whose guidance, impulses, feelings, &c., were to be so implicitly obeyed, than the spectacle of a woman in the height of her youth and beauty, loving her husband, and yet amusing herself by writing in her pocket-book in this cold-blooded manner, a long list of his infidelities and ending by expressing her satisfaction?Mme. de Tourzel asserts that La Fayette helped to irritate the mob against him, and that he was afraid of de Favras intrigues against himself, as he was accused of plotting to murder Necker, Bailly, and La Fayette.
TWO:
THREE:DArtois accordingly told M. de Montbel that he wished to make an excursion into the forest, but when the carriage came round which had been ordered for him, he said he would rather walk, and took care to go so far out of the way that his tutor was very tired.The Duc dAyen got a lettre de cachet from the King to stop him, but it was too late. Letters were [191] sent by the family to say that Adrienne was very ill, and by this he was so far influenced that he set out on his journey homewards, but finding from other letters he received that she was in no danger at all, he turned back again.
FORE:The Queen, Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, ex-King of Poland, was a harmless, uninteresting woman, who had no ambition, no talent, no influence, and a great many children.One Gorsas, a violent Radical whom she had never seen or heard of, was especially violent in the atrocities he poured forth against her for no reason whatever. He was a political writer and afterwards a Jacobin, but met with his due reward, for he was [67] arrested by the Revolutionists he admired so greatly, and guillotined.
E. H. BearneThe States-General were to open on May 5th, and the day before M. de Beaune and M. de Montagu went to Versailles to be present, Pauline remaining in Paris to nurse a sick servant.The career of Jeanne Vaubernier, Comtesse Du Barry, was a most extraordinary one. Her father was a workman, and she, after being a milliners apprentice for some years, lived under the name of Mlle. Lange, in a house of bad fame, where she became the mistress of Count Jean Du Barry, who in 1769 presented her to Louis XV., who was deeply fascinated by her wonderful beauty, and over whom, after having gone through the form of marriage with the brother of Jean Du Barry, she reigned supreme during the remainder of his life. But her day of power and splendour was only a short one, for the King died five years afterwards (1774), when she was, of course, immediately obliged to leave the court and live in retirement; probably much sooner than she expected, for Louis XV. was only sixty-three when he fell a victim to small-pox. The twelve years had been spent in her chateau, where the Duc de Brissac took the place of his royal predecessor.Rushing to him, he threw his arms round his neck, exclaimingShe was constantly surrounded by perils and temptations which to many would have been irresistible. Admiring eyes followed her at the theatre, people crowded round her in the gardens and places of entertainment, men of rank who wanted an opportunity of making love to her had their portraits painted by her for that purpose; but she treated them all with indifference, and when she noticed that their looks and glances were too expressive she would coolly remark: I am painting your eyes now, or would insist on the portrait being done with the eyes looking in another direction.
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