ONE:Here was a terrible position. They had no maid, the manservant was a new one, the servants of the inn could do nothing to help as the inn was crowded; they could not get a doctor till the evening, or a nurse for four days. Mme. de Genlis, however, understood perfectly well how to treat them, and nursed them till they recovered.Then she fled to her own room and gave way [225] to her grief, and to the forebodings which filled her mind, and still hung over her like a cloud, during the preparations and journey to Paris, where M. de Montagu soon wrote for his wife and child to join him without delay.
TWO:There you are exactly! cried her friend; you are just like a boy. Well, I warn you that you will be confined this evening.
ONE:From this time began her brilliant career. Essentially a woman of the world, delighting in society and amusement, though always praising the pleasures of solitude and retirement, she entered the household of the Duchesse dOrlans, wife of the infamous Philippe-galit, and while constantly declaiming against ambition managed to get all her relations lucrative posts at the Palais Royal, and married one if not both her daughters to rich men of rank with notoriously bad reputations.
TWO:And a lad of sixteen at the court of Louis XV. was very different from the average lad of that age in these days and this country, a shy, awkward schoolboy who knows nothing of the world or society, can only talk to other boys, and cares for nothing except sports and games. In the France, or at any rate the Paris, of those days, he was already a man and a courtier, probably a soldier, sometimes a husband and father. [50]When she received the ladies of the Court on her accession, Mme. de Clermont-Tonnerre, a thoughtless girl of sixteen, sat on the carpet all the time, hidden by the ladies of the household who stood before her, making grimaces behind her fan, whispering nonsense, pulling the dresses of her companions and making them all, even the Queen herself, unable to restrain their laughter; so that great offence was given and the blame of course laid on the Queen. The King was very angry, sent for Mme. de Clermont-Tonnerre and reprimanded her; whereupon she turned all her spite against the Queen, and all the Clermonts went into opposition.