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TWO:There Pauline had a son, and to her great joy he and the children she afterwards had lived to grow up. The farm Mme. de Tess¨¦ wished for was called Wittmold, and lay at the other side of the lake upon a plain covered with pasture and ponds, as far as the eye could reach. The house stood on a promontory jutting out into the lake, and was surrounded by fields, apple trees, and pine woods. They crossed the lake in boats, and established themselves there. They could live almost entirely upon the produce of the place, for there was plenty of game, plenty of fish in the lake: the dairy farm paid extremely well, the pasture produced rich, delicious milk; they had a hundred and twenty cows, and made enormous quantities of butter, which they sold at Hamburg. It was pleasant enough in the summer, but in winter the lake was frozen, the roads covered with snow, and the cold wind from the Baltic raved round the house. However, they were thankful for the shelter of a home that most of their friends would have envied, and they lived peacefully there for four years, during which Pauline organised and carried on a great work of charity which, with the assistance of one or two influential friends, soon spread all over Europe. It was a kind of society with branches in different countries, to collect subscriptions for the relief of the French exiles, and it involved an enormous amount of letter-writing, for, if the subscriptions poured into Wittmold, so did letters of entreaty, appealing for help. But Pauline was indefatigable not only in allotting the different sums of money, [255] but in finding employment, placing young girls as governesses, selling drawings and needlework, &c.We offer the best Services in our Restarant.
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TWO:She was, however, first sent to her mother¡¯s family in Austria, where she was received, of course, with great affection, but kept as much as possible from seeing even the French emigr¨¦s, of whom there were so many in Austria. The Austrian plan was to marry her to one of the archdukes, her cousins, and then claim for her the succession to Burgundy, Franche Comt¨¦, and Bretagne; to all of which she would, in fact, have had a strong claim if France could have been dismembered; as these provinces all went in the female line, and had thus been united to the kingdom of France.[364]We offer the best Services in our Restarant.
