The streets and squares were thronged with French refugees, who had fled, and were still flying, from France. They arrived by thousands, men, women, and children of all ranks and ages, most of them without luggage, money, or even food; having had no time to take anything with them or think of anything but saving their lives. The old Duchesse de Villeroi had been supported on the journey by her maid, who had enough money to get food for ten sous a day. Women, who had never been in carts before, were prematurely confined on the road, owing to the jolting; children were crying for food, it was a heartrending spectacle. The King gave orders that food and lodging should be found for them, but there was not room to put them all in; the Comtesse de Provence was having [115] food carried about the streets, and Lisette, like the rest, gave all the help in her power, going round with the equerry of Madame to look for rooms and get provisions.
TWO:One evening, during his coucher, the conversation turning upon difficulties in the financial situation owing to the refusal of the parliaments of the different provinces to enregister certain taxes, a man highly placed in the Kings household remarkedEven the proscribed arms and liveries were beginning here and there to appear, and the leader in this revival was Mme. de Montesson.
TWO:Rosalie was rather plain, with irregular but expressive features, small eyes and a chin inclined to be square and decided; she was precocious for her age, but good-tempered, calm, and possessing great strength of character.
TWO: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.
TWO:The Princess had therefore, as soon as she could get away from Austria, joined her uncles and aunts and married the Duc dAngoulme, concentrating all her affection upon those remaining members of her family, who received her with the deepest joy and tenderness.Her first great dinner-party was at the house of the sculptor Le Moine, where she met chiefly artists and literary people. It was the custom to sing at dessert, a terrible ordeal for young girls, whose alarm often spoilt their song, but who were obliged to sing all the same.
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.IL PONTE VECCHIO, FLORENCE