The ancien rgimeClose of the reign of Louis XIV.The Regent OrlansThe court of Louis XV.The philosophersThe artistsM. Vige.Twice a week at a certain hour she went on pretence of taking the air to a place from whence she could see her three children, whom their tutor, devoted to her and her family, brought into the garden below. Now and then she received and sent notes to and from him, by one of which they [246] learnt that Adrienne was in the prison called Plessis, one of the worst.
ONE:Her farm near the Baltic did not altogether satisfy Mme. de Tess, and before long they again moved, to be in the neighbourhood of a residence she had heard of, and hoped to get after a time.
THREE:The Chasseurs de Lorraine and regiment de Flandre having been sent to Versailles on account of the crimes and murders daily committed there, the gardes-du-corps gave them a splendid banquet in the Salle de Comdie, to which all the troops, including the gardes-nationales, were invited.At the beginning of August, Pauline, after making up the accounts, told her father-in-law that she had enough money left only to carry on the household for three months longer, but that if they returned to Brussels it would last twice as long, for they could live there much better at half the cost.
THREE:She now painted the whole day except when on Sundays she received in her studio the numbers of people, from the Imperial family downwards, who came to see her portraits; to which she had added a new and great attraction, for she had caused to be sent from Paris her great picture of Marie Antoinette in a blue velvet dress, which excited the deepest interest. The Prince de Cond, when he came to see it, could not speak, but looked at it and burst into tears.
At last they arrived at Moudon, her father led her into a room in the inn, closed the door and began by telling her as gently as possible that he had just lost his mother, the Marchale de Noailles. He stopped, seeing the deadly paleness of his daughter, who knew by his face that he had not told all.Que deviendront nos belles dames?But the next day passed and she was not called for. All day she waited in a feverish, terrible suspense that can well be imagined; night came and she was still spared. Morning dawned, the morning of the 9th Thermidor. The weather was frightfully oppressive, and in all the prisons in Paris they were stifling from the heat, for the late cruel restrictions had put an end, even in the more indulgent prisons, to the possibility of walks in garden or cloister and the chance of fresh air. But as the long, weary day wore on, there seemed to be some change approaching; there was an uneasy feeling about, for there had lately been rumours of another massacre in the prisons, and the prisoners, this time resolving to sell their lives dearly, had been agreeing upon and arranging what little defence they could make. Some planned a barricade made of their beds, others examined the furniture with a view to breaking it up into clubs, a few brought carefully out knives they had managed to conceal in holes and corners from the prison officials, some filled their pockets with cinders and ashes to fling in the faces of their assailants, and so escape in the confusion, while others, republicans and atheists, felt for the cabanis, a poison they carried about them, and assured themselves that it was all safe and ready for use.
