Mme. de Genlis was very happy at the Arsenal with Casimir and a little boy named Alfred, whom she had adopted.
ONE:When the storm had subsided the peasants were crying and lamenting over the destruction of their crops, and all the large proprietors in the neighbourhood came most generously to their assistance. One rich man distributed forty thousand francs among them. The next year he was one of the first to be massacred.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.
And he clasped her in his arms.But here, in this half-barbarous country, at an immense distance from everywhere she had ever been before, with a different church, a language incomprehensible to her and a sovereign mysterious, powerful, autocratic, whose reputation was sinister, and to whose private character were attached the darkest suspicions, an additional uneasiness was [124] added to her reflections owing entirely to her habitual careless absence of mind in not having provided herself with a proper toilette for the occasion.