[x]She observed also that it was now usual for all the men to stand at one side of the room, leaving the women at the other, as if they were enemies.
Director
Mme. de Boisgeloup, however, received the children with the greatest kindness, her two boys were companions for the young Cabarrus, and as for Trzia, she loved and treated her like a daughter. They lived in the rue dAnjou, and when the following year her father arrived at Paris and bought a h?tel in the place des Victoires she still spent less of her time with him than with her.After this Flicit and her husband returned to Genlis, where they spent the summer with the Marquis and the wife he had recently married.Well! Was I wrong? Here is your sisters husband. Go together to Saint-Germain, and dont let me see either of you until everything is arranged. I hate all talk of money affairs.But as dinner-parties then took place in the day-time, often as early as two oclock, Lisette soon found it impossible to spare the time to go to them. What finally decided her to give them up was an absurd contretemps that happened one day when she was going to dine with the Princesse de Rohan-Rochefort. Just as she was dressed in a white satin dress she was wearing for the first time, and ready to get into the carriage, she, like her father in former days, remembered that she wished to look again at a picture she was painting, and going into her studio sat down upon a chair which stood before her easel without noticing that her palette was upon it. The consequences were of course far more disastrous than what had befallen her father; it was impossible to go to the party, and after this she declined as a rule all except evening invitations, of which she had even more than enough.It was a change indeed from Louis XVI. Every one trembled before Napoleon except his brother Lucien; and perhaps his mother, who, however, never had the slightest influence over him. He required absolute submission; but if not in opposition to his will, he liked a high spirit and ready answer [463] in a young man, or woman either, and detested weakness, cowardice, and indecision.