Freethinkers, deists, or open atheists most of them were, delighting in blasphemous assaults and attacks, not only upon the Church and religion in general, but upon God himself; and so outrageous and scurrilous was their habitual language [12] upon such subjects that they found it necessary to disguise, by a sort of private slang known only to each other, their conversation in public places where it might be not only offensive to their hearers, but dangerous to themselves.
Louveciennes [36] was near Marly and Versailles. The chateau built by Louis XV. was in a delightful park, but there was a melancholy feeling about the whole place.
ONE:The following story is an example of the kind.
ONE:The King would not even try to defend himself or those belonging to him. Narbonne Fritzlard begged him to let him have troops and guns with which he would soon scatter the brigands, who could only pass by Meudon and the bridges of Svres and St. Cloud. Then, from the heights I will cannonade them and pursue them with cavalry, not one shall reach Paris again, said the gallant soldier, who even then would have saved the miserable King in spite of himself. [79]
THREE:Mme. S was carrying on a liaison with Calonne, who was very much in love with her and very often at her house; she was also sitting for her portrait to Mme. Le Brun, who looked upon her as a pretty, gentle, attractive woman, but thought the expression of her face rather false.It had great success at the Salon, was engraved by Müller, and was one of those amongst her works which decided Joseph Vernet, shortly after her return, to propose her as a member of the Royal Academy of Painting. She was duly elected, in spite of the opposition of M. Pierre, who was painter to the King, and a very bad painter too.
THREE:Saturdayof Messidor! he exclaimed, when ordering the Moniteur to be dated on a certain day. We shall be laughed at! But I will do away with the Messidor! I will efface all the inventions of the Jacobins! [109]
Of all of them the greatest was Potemkin, a Polish officer, to whom it was rumoured that she was secretly married, and whom she made Generalissimo of the Armies of Russia, Grand Admiral of the Fleet, and supreme Hetman of the Cossacks.One autumn night, after ten oclock, the beggar had not come in. They supposed the woman who took care of him had neglected to fetch him, and charitably waited till half-past. The sister cellarer sent for the keys, to take them, as usual, to the prioress, who would put them under her pillow. She was a demoiselle de Toustain, who, par parenthse, had had the golden ball of her prioresss staff engraved with the motto of her family, Tous-teints-de-sang (All stained with blood), which my aunt had thought out of place on an emblem of religious and pastoral office. She had remarked to the [372] Prioress, My dear daughter, a war-cry is always improper for a bride of Jesus Christ....Mme. Le Brun found society at the Russian capital extremely amusing, and was, if possible, received with even more enthusiasm than in the other countries in which she had sojourned. She went to balls, dinners, suppers, or theatricals every night, and when she could manage to spare the time from the numerous portraits she painted, she went to stay in the country houses and palaces near, where in addition to other festivities they had ftes on the Neva by night, in gorgeously fitted up boats with crimson and gold curtains, accompanied by musicians.[46]Owing to her brilliant success, to the affection and friendship which surrounded her wherever she went, to her absorbing interest in her art, the delightful places and society in which she spent her time, and also to her own sunny, light-hearted nature, her long life, in spite of certain serious domestic drawbacks and sorrows, was a very happy one. Her wonderful capacity for enjoyment, her appreciation of beauty in nature and art, the great interest she took in matters intellectual and political, her pleasure in the society of her numerous friends, and her ardent devotion to the religious and royalist principles of her youth, continued undiminished through the peaceful old age which terminated her brilliant career.
