After the alarms of the Hundred Days and all the misfortunes involved, it took some time to restore order and security. For a long time the Champs-Elyses were not safe to walk in after dark.
It consisted, at the death of Louis XV., of the King, aged nineteen; the Queen, eighteen; the Comte de Provence, eighteen; the Comtesse de Provence, twenty; the Comte dArtois, seventeen; and the Comtesse dArtois, eighteen. Of Mesdames Adla?de, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, the last of whom was a Carmelite nun, and whose ages were from thirty-eight to forty-three.Barras was the leading spirit in this society, and for some time he was at Trzias feet. But if [340] Tallien was not a great man, neither was Barras; amongst all the unscrupulous ruffians of the revolutionary party there did not appear to be one superior enough to his fellows to command or lead them.
ONE:The next morning they went to Raincy, where the Duke and M. de Sillery spent the whole of the day with them. The infatuation between the Duke and Mme. de Genlis seems to have been at an end, if we may trust her account of that last day.
THREE:But nothing would ever have induced him as long as he lived to allow the States-General to be summoned. He regarded them with an unchanging abhorrence which seems prophetic.E. H. Bearne
She was herself most anxious to get out of France, but in spite of her representations the journey kept being put off on various excuses until the autumn, when one day M. de Valence, who had also a post in the Palais Royal, told her that the Duke was going to England that night, which he did, leaving her a note saying he would be back in a month.[109]An old German baroness exclaimedOn hearing that they were, he remarked