She was happier now than she had been for a long time; she heard every now and then from her father and Rosalie, her husband was with her, and her love for the aunt, who was their good angel, ever increased. But still the terrible death of her mother, sister, and grandmother cast its shadow over her life, added to which was her uncertainty about Adrienne.[144]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.
A quinze ans, said the old soldier, firmly, jai mont lassaut pour mon roi; prs de quatre-vingts ans je monterai lchafaud pour mon Dieu.La brave fille will not be guillotined at all, he said, for I have just seen her die in her bed at an advanced age.When Mme. de Bouzolz had a baby, she nursed her devotedly, and took the deepest interest in the child. But the height of bliss seemed to be attained when soon after she had a daughter herself, with which she was so enraptured and about which she made such a fuss, that one can well imagine how tiresome it must have been for the rest of the family. She thought of nothing else, would go nowhere, except to the wedding of her sister, Mme. du Roure, with M. de Thsan; and when in the following spring the poor little thing died after a short illness, she fell into a state of grief and despair which alarmed the whole family, who found it impossible to comfort her. She would sit by the empty cradle, crying, and making drawings in pastel of the child from memory after its portrait had been put away out of her sight. But her unceasing depression and lamentation so worried M. de Beaune that, seeing this, she left off talking about it, and he, hoping she was becoming [198] more resigned to the loss, proposed that she should begin again to go into society after more than a year of retirement. She consented, to please him, for as he would not leave her his life was, of course, very dull. But the effort and strain of it made her so ill that the next year she was obliged to go to Bagnres de Luchon. M. de Beaune, who was certainly a devoted father-in-law, went with her. Her mother and eldest sister came to visit her there; her husband travelled three hundred leagues, although he was ill at the time, to see how she was getting on, and in the autumn she was much better, and able to go to the wedding of her favourite sister, Rosalie, with the Marquis de Grammont.Rosalie arrived, her pelisse all covered with snow; the wind raged and it was bitterly cold. Pauline gave her sister the letters for the Duchesse dAyen [226] and Vicomtesse de Noailles, neither of whom she was ever to see again, awoke her child who was astonished to be taken up and dressed by candle-light, and gave her to M. de Montagu, who took her to the carriage, and then came back and, saying Everything is ready, pressed the hand of his sister-in-law without any further leave taking than if they were going into the country, as the servants were standing about.
