ONE:Her illness was of course aggravated by the accounts from Paris, and she heard with dismay that La Fayette had been made commander of the garde-nationale, which she dreaded to see him leading against the King. He had then reached the height of his power. [77]Her farm near the Baltic did not altogether satisfy Mme. de Tess, and before long they again moved, to be in the neighbourhood of a residence she had heard of, and hoped to get after a time.
TWO:Her farm near the Baltic did not altogether satisfy Mme. de Tess, and before long they again moved, to be in the neighbourhood of a residence she had heard of, and hoped to get after a time.Her love for Tallien was beginning to wane. It had never been more than a mad passion, aroused by excitement, romance, and the strange circumstances which threw them into each others way; and kept alive by vanity, interest, gratitude, and perhaps above all by success. She wanted Tallien to be a great power, a great man; and she was beginning to see that he was nothing of the sort. If, when Robespierre fell, instead of helping to set up a government composed of other men, he had seized the reins himself, she would have supported him heart and soul, shared his power, ambition, [339] and danger, and probably her admiration and pride might have preserved her love for him. But Tallien had not the power to play such a part; he had neither brains nor character to sway the minds of men and hold their wills in bondage to his own. And now he was in a position which in any line of life surely bars the way to success: he was neither one thing or the other.
