When she was about twelve years old she left Burgundy with her mother and Mlle. de Mars. They travelled partly by boat on the Loire, partly with their own carriage and horses, to Paris, where they established themselves, and where Flicit pursued her musical studies with increased ardour. She must have been a precocious young person, for when she was eleven years old the son of the neighbouring doctor fell in love with her, managed to give her a note, which she showed to Mlle. Mars, and meeting with indignant discouragement, he ran away for three years, after which he came home and married somebody else.Unscrupulous, heartless, remorseless, yet he was a saint and angel compared to the frantic, raving, blood-stained miscreants whom he had displaced, and whose work he was now occupied in undoing as fast as he could.
The dishonourable nature of this transaction does not seem to have occurred either to her mother or to Lisette herself. She was rather glad to keep her own name a little longer, but not at all pleased when, it being rumoured that she was engaged to M. Le Brun, everybody began to warn her on no account to marry him.M. Geoffrin did not altogether approve of his wifes perpetual presence at the h?tel Tencin, which had by no means a good reputation; and when she also began to receive in her own house a few of the literary men whom she met there, philosophers, freethinkers, and various persons upon whom he looked with suspicion, he at first strongly objected. But it was useless. His wife had found the sixteen years of her married life remarkably dull; she had at length, by good fortune, discovered the means of transforming her monotonous existence into one full of interest, and the obscurity which had hitherto been her lot into an increasing celebrity. She turned a deaf ear to his remonstrances, and after a good deal of dissension and quarrelling the husband gave way and contented himself with looking after the household and being a silent guest at the famous dinners given by his wife, until at length, on some one asking her what had become of the old gentleman [38] who was always there and never spoke, she repliedWith a few more words of mingled criticism and compliment, he bowed slightly and turned again to M. Rivarol.
