But her first impressions were very painful, notwithstanding her emotion when first she heard the people around her speaking French, saw the towers of Notre Dame, passed the barrire, and found herself again driving through the streets of Paris.
ONE:These children, of whom she was the elder by a year, were the only ones who survived of the four born to their parents, and were devotedly fond of each other; the remembrance of their happy childhood together in the rambling old chateau and the great garden with its terrace over the Loire always remained vividly impressed upon the mind of Flicit.
ONE:WHILE Mme. de Genlis was safe and enjoying herself in England terrible events were happening in France. The Duke of Orlans, already infamous in the eyes of all decent people, was beginning to lose his popularity with the revolutionists. He [125] could not doubt the discredit into which he had fallen, the flight of his son [126] exposed him to dangerous suspicions; it was decided to get rid of him. He had demanded that his explanations should be admitted, but he was advised to ask rather, in the interest of your own safety, for a decree of banishment for yourself and your family.She came to the wedding with the son and daughter of her second marriage; the latter was afterwards the celebrated Mme. de Montesson. But she managed permanently to cheat her elder daughter out of nearly the whole of the property of her father, and always behaved to her and to her children with the most heartless cruelty.
TWO:Joseph Vernet had a little son of whose talent for drawing he was very proud; and one day at a party where his friends joked him on his infatuation, he sent for the child, gave him a pencil and paper, and told him to draw.Still, there was at first much to attract her. The friends who had survived were delighted to have her again amongst them. Many of her foreign friends arrived in Paris; she began again to give suppers which were as popular as ever. She even gave a ball at which the celebrated dancers, M. de Trnis, Mme. Hamelin, and Mme. Demidoff, excited general admiration. She also gave private theatricals in her large gallery.
TWO:We are not blind, said Tallien. We only strike the enemies of the Republic.
THREE:Thus happily and peacefully the rest of her life flowed on; her interest in all political and social mattersart, science, and literatureremaining undiminished, her affection for old friends unaltered, while new ones were constantly added to the number, until on May 29, 1842, she died at the age of eighty-seven.
THREE:THE last of the four French heroines whose histories are here to be related, differed in her early surroundings and circumstances from the three preceding ones. She was neither the daughter of a powerful noble like the Marquise de Montagu, nor did she belong to the finance or the bourgeoisie like Mme. Le Brun and Mme. Tallien. Her father was noble but poor, her childhood was spent, not in a great capital but in the country, and as she was born nearly ten years before the first and six-and-twenty years before the last of the other three, she saw much more than they did of the old France before it was swept away by the Revolution.Madame Royale united all the virtues of her own sex with the energy of ours. She alone would have been able to reconquer our sceptre if, like her grandmother, Marie Thrse, she had had the command of an army....
