ONE:Their carriage never came, so Mme. de Genlis had to take them home in hers, which appeared about two oclock, and it was half-past three when she arrived at the h?tel de Puisieux, where everybody was up and in a fever of anxiety, thinking she was killed, for they knew what she did not, that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of persons had perished.
ONE:In the name of him who is gone, I bring you this help; he loved all Frenchmen.She had only to choose amongst the great personages who wanted their portraits painted; and she spent the time when she was not working in wandering amid the scenes to visit which had been the dream of her life. Ruins of temples, baths, acqueducts, tombs, and monuments of the vanished Empire, gorgeous churches and palaces of the Renaissance, huge never-ending galleries of statues and pictures, the glories of Greek and of medi?val art; Phidias and Praxiteles, Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo; the picturesque beauty of Rome, as it was then, the delicious gardens, since swept away by the greedy vandalism of their owners; the mighty Colosseum; the solemn desolate Campagna; all filled her mind and imagination and distracted her thoughts from France and the horrors going on there. At Rome in those days there certainly seemed to be everything that could be wished for to make life a paradise upon earth. Besides the natural beauty, the historical and arch?ological interest, and the treasures of art, the magnificence of the ecclesiastical functions, church services, stately processions, and entrancing music were a perpetual delight to her. There is no city in the world, she wrote to a [96] friend, in which one could pass ones time so deliciously as in Rome, even if one were deprived of all the resources of good society.
TWO:Louveciennes [36] was near Marly and Versailles. The chateau built by Louis XV. was in a delightful park, but there was a melancholy feeling about the whole place.Marie Antoinette spoke to the latter about it, and of course he indignantly denied all complicity, but confessed that the libel had been sent him in an envelope, adding that he had thrown it into the fire, and if any of his people had been more imprudent he would dismiss them at once.
TWO:Her first child, the only one that lived, was born in February, 1780.The breathing time given to unhappy Bordeaux [313] came to an end. Tallien was recalled, and his place filled by the ferocious Jullien.
