Through many little, narrow streets they at last got out into the country, and arrived at the filthy, ruinous cottage where lived the fortune-teller. They gave her each an cu, not wishing by too lavish a payment to betray themselves, and the [293] Comtesse dAdhmar was the first to place her hand in the dirty, wrinkled one of the old gipsy, who, after telling her that she had had two husbands, and would have no more, added, You are now in the service of a good mistress, who loves you; but before long she will send you away against her will, but she will no longer be free to do as she chooses.
ONE:Madame, do you know what it costs to wish for once in ones life to see the sun rise? Read that and tell me what you think of the poetry of our friends.
But Louis refused, and when the ruffians surrounded the chateau, forbade them to be fired on, [216] which order, when they heard, they began to massacre the gardes-du-corps, who were not allowed to defend themselves!Here was a terrible position. They had no maid, the manservant was a new one, the servants of the inn could do nothing to help as the inn was crowded; they could not get a doctor till the evening, or a nurse for four days. Mme. de Genlis, however, understood perfectly well how to treat them, and nursed them till they recovered.They were in the habit of spending part of every summer at tioles, with M. le Normand, fermier gnral des postes, husband of Mme. de Pompadour, then the mistress of Louis XV. After one of these visits, when Flicit was about six years old, it having been decided to obtain for her and for one of her little cousins admission into the order of chanoinesses of the Noble Chapter of Alix; the two children with their mothers travelled in an immense travelling-carriage called a berline, to Lyon, where they were detained for a fortnight, during which the Comtes de Lyon examined the genealogical proofs of their noble descent. Finding them correct and sufficient for their admission into the order, they proceeded to Alix, at some distance from Lyon; where, with the huge abbey and church in the centre were, grouped, in the form of a semi-circle, the tiny houses, each with its [353] little garden, which were the dwellings of the chanoinesses.If religious processions, and splendid carriages with six or eight horses preceded by piqueurs, were no longer to be seen in the streets, neither were mobs of drunken, howling, bloodthirsty ruffians, who would have been made short work of by the great First Consul who so firmly held the reins which had dropped from the feeble hands of Louis XVI.