Sil aime les honntes femmes,He and Vergennes were said to have wasted the revenues of France, but at any rate he spent money like a gentleman, and when, in 1787, he was dismissed from office, he did not possess an cu.
ONE:Pauline, who firmly believed in the ultimate success of the royalist army, and whose heart and soul were with the gallant soldiers of Cond and the heroic peasants of La Vende, waited at Aix-la-Chapelle, studying English and German and corresponding with her mother and sisters under cover of an old servant.The Comte de Provence, his brother, remarks in his souvenirs: The court did not like Louis XVI., he was too uncongenial to its ways, and he did not know how to separate himself from it, and to draw nearer to the people, for there are times when a sovereign ought to know how to choose between one and the other. What calamities my unfortunate brother would have spared himself and his family, if he had known how to hold with a firm hand the sceptre Providence had entrusted to him. [84]
ONE:For the first circulation had been traced to some of his household. He sent away two men in his service, but it was well known that he paid them their wages all the time and soon took them back again.
TWO:Kaunitz was now eighty-three years old, tall, thin, and upright. His great intellect, taste, and judgment seemed unimpaired, and he prided himself on his perfect seat on horseback. In costume and appearance he resembled the splendid cavaliers of the court of Louis XIV.
TWO:Likewise girls at fourteen or fifteen and even younger, who, with us, wear their hair down their backs, their petticoats half way up to their knees, and spend their time in lessons and play, were wives, mothers, court beauties, and distinguished members of society at the French Court of those days.
TWO:The Comtes de Provence and dArtois were married to the two daughters of the King of Sardinia, to whose eldest son the Princess Clotilde was betrothed.But she was so ill that she could not stand, and as she lay delirious upon her pallet in a high fever, one of her fellow prisoners called to M. Cazotte, who was also imprisoned there, and was famous for having predicted many things which had always come true, especially for his prophecy at the notorious supper of the Prince de Beauvau, at which he had foretold the horrors of the Revolution and the fate of the different guests, now being, or having been, terribly fulfilled. [105]
THREE:For some little time the Comte dArtois had been regarding the sister of one of his valets de pied with an admiration which she was evidently quite ready to return. Finding some difficulty in getting an interview with her, he applied to her brother who, delighted at the fancy of the Prince for his sister, and the probable advantages it might bring, promised his assistance, and arranged that the young girl, who was extremely pretty, should meet him dressed as a peasant in the cottage of a forester of Compigne.There was a general exclamation of dissent, but the King replied
