ONE:Still, there was at first much to attract her. The friends who had survived were delighted to have her again amongst them. Many of her foreign friends arrived in Paris; she began again to give suppers which were as popular as ever. She even gave a ball at which the celebrated dancers, M. de Trnis, Mme. Hamelin, and Mme. Demidoff, excited general admiration. She also gave private theatricals in her large gallery.THE theatre was a passion with Mme. Le Brun, and all the more interesting to her from her friendships with some of the chief actors and actresses, and her acquaintance with most of them, from the great geniuses such as Talma, Mlle. Mars, and Mlle. Clairon to the dbutantes like Mlle. Rancourt, whose career she watched with sympathetic interest. For Mme. Dugazon, sister of Mme. Vestris and aunt of the famous dancer Vestris, she had an unmixed admiration; she was a gifted artist and a Royalist heart and soul. One evening when Mme. Dugazon was playing a soubrette, in which part came a duet with a valet, who sang:
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THREE:As, during the first years of their lives, even Flicit herself could not begin to instruct them, she paid a daily visit of an hour to them, and occupied herself in writing a book on education for their use and that of her own children. She also wrote Adle et Thodore, and numbers of other books, novels, essays, plays, treatises on education, &c., which had great success.
THREE:The Comte dArtois did not hesitate to give 1,700 louis for a race horse, or to lose four or five hundred thousand francs in an evening at cards; and the Emperor Joseph II., when under the name of Count von Falkenstein he paid the celebrated visit to France and his sister, wherein he made himself so disagreeable and gave so much offence, was well justified in the contemptuous sarcasm with which he spoke of the squandering of the revenues in racing and gambling.
THREE:Society in London she found triste after the splendour of St. Petersburg and the brilliant gaiety of Paris and Vienna, declaring that what struck her most was the want of conversation, and that a favourite form of social entertainment was what was called a rout, at which no sort of amusement or real social intercourse was offered or expected, the function merely consisting of an enormous crowd of people walking up and down the rooms, the men generally separate from the women.
