Her mother was extremely beautiful, of rather an austere character, and very religious. With her the children attended High Mass and the other offices of the Church, especially during Lent; and upon the sensitive, impressionable girl the solemn beauty of the music, and especially the deep notes of the organ, produced an almost overpowering effect. Often as she sat or knelt by her mother the rich, [17] melodious tones echoing through choir and nave in the dim, religious gloom would throw her into a kind of rapture, and end in a passion of tears which she could not always conceal. This intense feeling for music, especially religious music, lasted all her life.
It does not seem to occur to her that it was she herself who caused the destruction of all this purity and principle by giving her child to a man of notoriously bad character; but without taking any blame to herself she goes on to say that Pulchrie was, and always would be in her eyes, gentle, sweet-tempered, kind-hearted, and easy to live withwhich she probably was.M. de Puisieux was furious at being not only deceived and treated without consideration, but actually made a fool of, and that he was by no means a person to be trifled with the elder brother of the Comte de Genlis had found to his cost.She was constantly surrounded by perils and temptations which to many would have been irresistible. Admiring eyes followed her at the theatre, people crowded round her in the gardens and places of entertainment, men of rank who wanted an opportunity of making love to her had their portraits painted by her for that purpose; but she treated them all with indifference, and when she noticed that their looks and glances were too expressive she would coolly remark: I am painting your eyes now, or would insist on the portrait being done with the eyes looking in another direction.
ONE:Tallien was the acknowledged son of the maitre-dh?tel of the Marquis de Bercy, but strongly suspected of being the son of the Marquis himself, who was his godfather and paid his expenses at a college from which he ran away when he was [288] fifteen. Already an atheist and a revolutionist, besides being a lazy scoundrel who would not work, he was, after a violent scene with the Marquis, abandoned by him, after which he quarrelled with his reputed father, a worthy man with several other children, who declined to support him in idleness, and threatened him with his curse. Taisez-vous, mon pre, cela ne se fait plus dans le monde, was the answer of the future septembriseur. His mother, however, interposed, and it was arranged that he should continue to live at home and should study in the office of a procureur. Step by step he rose into notoriety, until he was elected a member of the commune of Paris, where he was soon recognised as one of the most violent of the revolutionists.I inquired in what manner the letter had arrived there, but all those in my service declared they knew nothing about it.
TWO:The French Ambassador, Count dEsterhazy, said that he would come at ten and take her to djeuner with his wife, who was just then living at Czarskoiesolo. For the first time during her wandering life from court to court, Lisette felt intimidated, and trembled. This was so different from any of her former experiences. At every other court she had been en pays de connaissance. Austrian society was very like Parisian, Rome was the centre of Christendom, the sovereigns of the lesser Italian states were the near relations of her own King and Queen, their religion was the same.
TWO:There Pauline had a son, and to her great joy he and the children she afterwards had lived to grow up. The farm Mme. de Tess wished for was called Wittmold, and lay at the other side of the lake upon a plain covered with pasture and ponds, as far as the eye could reach. The house stood on a promontory jutting out into the lake, and was surrounded by fields, apple trees, and pine woods. They crossed the lake in boats, and established themselves there. They could live almost entirely upon the produce of the place, for there was plenty of game, plenty of fish in the lake: the dairy farm paid extremely well, the pasture produced rich, delicious milk; they had a hundred and twenty cows, and made enormous quantities of butter, which they sold at Hamburg. It was pleasant enough in the summer, but in winter the lake was frozen, the roads covered with snow, and the cold wind from the Baltic raved round the house. However, they were thankful for the shelter of a home that most of their friends would have envied, and they lived peacefully there for four years, during which Pauline organised and carried on a great work of charity which, with the assistance of one or two influential friends, soon spread all over Europe. It was a kind of society with branches in different countries, to collect subscriptions for the relief of the French exiles, and it involved an enormous amount of letter-writing, for, if the subscriptions poured into Wittmold, so did letters of entreaty, appealing for help. But Pauline was indefatigable not only in allotting the different sums of money, [255] but in finding employment, placing young girls as governesses, selling drawings and needlework, &c.
TWO:Although stupid, M. Geoffrin was harmless, good, and charitable. Their only child, the Marquise de la Fert Imbault, adored her father, whom she preferred to her mother. She was a pretty, high-spirited girl, an ardent Catholic, hated her mothers atheist friends, and always declared that she had forced her into her marriage, which, although a great one, was not a happy one.
TWO:When Lisette was about twenty, her step-father retired from business and took an apartment in the rue de Clry in a large house called h?tel Lubert, which had recently been bought by the well-known picture dealer, M. Le Brun.
However, the tears of Mademoiselle dOrlans and the entreaties of her brother prevailed; and at the [439] last moment she got into the carriage leaving all her luggage behind except her watch and harp. Mme. de Genlis, however, had got hers so could supply her, for they could not wait to pack.Trzia was much better off at the Carmes, for she was no longer au secret, but mixed in the day with the rest of the prisoners and shared a cell at night with the Duchesse dAiguillon and Josphine Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, whose husband, a revolutionary general and a thoroughly contemptible character, had lately been guillotined by his republican friends.
荣誉榜
THREE:Never in the worlds history was a stranger mingling of generosity and folly, unpractical learning [212] and brutal ignorance, misguided talents and well-meaning stupidity, saintly goodness and diabolical wickedness, heroic deeds and horrible crimes, than in the years ushered in with such triumph and joy by the credulous persons so truly described in later years by Napoleon: Political economists are nothing but visionaries who dream of plans of finance when they are not fit to be schoolmasters in the smallest village.... Your speculators trace their Utopian schemes upon paper, fools read and believe them, every one babbles about universal happiness, and presently the people have not bread to eat. Then comes a revolution.... Necker was the cause of the saturnalia that devastated France. It was he who overturned the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold.... Robespierre himself, Danton, and Marat have done less mischief to France than M. Necker. It was he who brought about the Revolution.Mme. Le Brun describes her as affectionate, simple, and royally generous. Hearing that the French Ambassador to Venice, M. de Bombelle, was the only one who refused to sign the Constitution, thereby reducing himself and his family to poverty; she wrote to him that all sovereigns owed a debt of gratitude to faithful subjects, and gave him a pension of twelve thousand francs. Two of his sons became Austrian ministers at Turin and Berne, another was Grand-Master of the household of Marie Louise.
THREE:Mme. de Verdun said no more, but went away and sent the doctor. Lisette dismissed him, but he [47] remained concealed in the house until night. The child was born about ten oclock, and Lisette was at once passionately fond of it, and as unfortunately foolish in her management of it as she was in the way she conducted all her affairs except her painting. She indulged and spoilt it in so deplorable a manner that she ruined her daughters disposition and her own comfort and happiness.
