ONE:[424]The Count and Countess de Genlis accompanied the Duke and Duchess de Chartres to Bordeaux, where he embarked, after a naval review; and the Duchess proceeded on a tour in Italy. To Flicit this was a time of enchantment. The journeys at that time were adventurous, and the Cornice road was then an affair of difficulty if not danger. They went by sea to Nice, spent a week in that delicious climate, and determined to make what she called the perilous journey from Nice to Genoa. They [400] went on mules over the pass by Turbia, and found the Cornice as she says truly a cornicheso narrow that in some places they could hardly pass singly, and often they had to get down and walk. They slept at Ospedaletto, the Duchess, Flicit, and the Countess de Rully in one room; the Duchess on a bed made of the rugs of the mules, the others, on cloaks spread upon a great heap of corn. After six days of perils and fatigues, and what they called horrible precipices, they got to Genoa.
TWO:
ONE:In Mme. Le Brun, the most gifted of all, we see a beauty, a genius, and a woman unusually charming and attractive, thrown, before she was sixteen, into the society of the magnificent, licentious court of Louis XV. Married to a dissipated, bourgeois spendthrift, for whom she had never cared; sought after, flattered, and worshipped in all the great courts of Europe; courted by fascinating, unscrupulous men of the highest rank, without the protection of family connections and an assured [viii] position; yet her religious principles, exalted character, and passionate devotion to her art, carried her unscathed and honoured through a life of extraordinary dangers and temptations.The Duke with an air of consternation asked her to come into another room alone with him, and there with much embarrassment told her that his daughter, who was now fifteen, was by a new law placed in the list of emigres for not having returned at the time appointed; that it was her fault for not bringing her back when he first sent for her; that he was sure to be able to make it all right by getting her placed in a list of exceptions to be made, but that meantime she must go and wait in some neutral country; that he implored Mme. de Genlis to take her to Tournay; that the decree of exception would certainly be out in a week, and then he would come himself and fetch his daughter, and she (Mme. de Genlis) should be free.
TWO:
ONE:So after much hesitation she consented, but so reluctantly, that even on her way to the church where the marriage was to be celebrated, [19] she still doubted and said to herself, Shall I say Yes or No? The wedding, however, took place, and she even agreed to its being a private one, and being kept secret for some time, because M. Le Brun was engaged to the daughter of a Dutchman with whom he had considerable dealings in pictures, and whom he continued to deceive in this matter until their business affairs were finished.She spoke in the inflated style of the time, which belonged especially to the ranting, extravagant, theatrical phraseology of that strange collection of individuals who now held supreme power in the country so recently the most civilised and polished in the world.
TWO:
