Mme. de Genlis lived to see her great-grandchildren, and also to see her pupil, the Duc de Orlans, upon the throne. She had never, of course, again the life of riches and splendour which for many years she had enjoyed; but she was philosophical enough not to trouble herself much about that; she had the interest of her literary pursuits, a large circle of acquaintances, the affection of her family and of her adopted children. Alfred turned out extremely well, and Casimir made an excellent marriage, settled at Mantes and devoted himself to good works, so that his adopted mother said his [485] household was saintly. She was always welcome there.After her brothers death she lost much of her prestige, and held her salon in the rue St. Honor, most of her habitus, after her death, transferring themselves to the house of Mme. Geoffrin.
Director
To escape from France was now both difficult and dangerous. The first to emigrate had been the Comte and Comtesse dArtois and their children, the Prince de Cond, Duc de Bourbon, Duc dEnghien, Mlle. de Cond, Prince de Lambesc, Marchaux de Broglie et de Castries, Duc de la Vauguyon, Comte de Vaudreuil, and a long string [292] of other great namesMailly, Bourbon-Busset, dAligre, de Mirepoix, all the Polignac and Polastron, the Abb de Vermont, &c. They left at night under borrowed names. The Queen fainted when she parted from the Duchesse de Polignac, who was carried unconscious to the carriage by the Comte de Vaudreuil. [94]Mme. de Clermont had been married at fifteen to the Comte de Choisi, who was much older than herself, and of whom she was dreadfully afraid; but he was killed at the battle of Minden, and she had just married the Comte de Clermont, who was deeply in love with her. She was young, pretty, very capricious, and a friend of Mme. de Montesson, and with all her faults never dull or tiresome, but full of merry talk and amusing stories; the Comtesse de Polignac and the Marquise de Barbantour were also among the ladies of the household [387] with whom Flicit was now associated; two much older ones were the Comtesses de Rochambault and de Montauban.The brothers went out shooting; there were visits, dances, village ftes; they dressed up, wrote verses, acted plays, and went to see the Rosire, an institution which, in this century, would be an impossibility, and which even then many people were beginning to find silly and useless, as may be shown by the remarks of a M. de Matigny, a magistrate and bailli, who was staying in the house for some theatricals, and whom they tried to persuade to stop another day.The hot weather she used to spend at some house [137] she took or had lent to her in the country near St. Petersburg.