UCS6 LIBRflRX
 
 FOUR FRENCHWOMEN 
 
 BY 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 1890
 
 ISAAC FOOT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 SrOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 LONDON
 
 To MY FRIEND 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 A MONG reasons for reprinting these papers, two 
 ** chiefly may be mentioned, one, that they were 
 originally planned for publication in book-form ; the 
 other, that by re-issuing them now, the author has 
 been enabled to give them the revision of which, 
 from lapse of time, they stood in need. 
 
 It may be objected that the Princess de Lamballe 
 was, by birth, an Italian. But by her marriage, by 
 the more important part of her life, and above all 
 by her tragic death, she belongs to the country of 
 her adoption.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE CORDAY i 
 
 MADAME ROLAND .31 
 
 THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE 63 
 
 MADAME DE GENLIS 107
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE CORDAY. 
 1768-1793.
 
 " Comprendre, c'est pardonner" 
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. 
 
 Ah ! judge her gently, who so grandly erred, 
 
 So singly smote, and so serenely fell ; 
 Where the wild Anarch's hurrying drums are heard, 
 
 The frenzy fires the finer souls as well.
 
 FOUR FRENCHWOMEN. 
 
 i. 
 
 T)ARIS streets have had their changes. If, 
 * novv-a-days, you want the Rue des Cor- 
 deliers, you must ask for the Rue de TEcole 
 de Medecine, and even between these two the 
 place has been three times christened. In the 
 room of the old Grey Friars church has sprung 
 up a spacious college ; where once, in the silent 
 convent-garden, the flat-foot fathers shuffled to 
 and fro, crowds of students now swarm daily 
 to the dissecting-rooms. Peaceful professors 
 dilate leisurely on the circulation of the blood 
 where once, in the hall of the erst-famous club, 
 Danton flashed suddenly into a furious elo- 
 quence, or Marat cried for " heads." The serge 
 and three-knot girdle have yielded to the scalpel 
 and the saw. 
 
 Nearly a century ago, there lived in the Rue 
 des Cordeliers one who had made himself a
 
 2 Four Frenchwomen . 
 
 power in France. Long before the Itiesin first 
 sounded in 1788, this man half dwarf, half 
 maniac, foiled plagiarist and savant manque', 
 prurient romancer, rancorous libeller, envious, 
 revengeful, and despised had heaped up infi- 
 nite hatred of all things better than himself. 
 " Cain in the social scale," he took his stand 
 upon the lowest grade, and struck at all above 
 him with dog-like ferocity, with insatiable malig- 
 nity. Champion of the canaille, he fought their 
 battles, and the " common cry of curs " was his. 
 Denounced to the Constituent Assembly, hunted 
 by the Paris Commune, besieged in his house 
 by Lafayette ; shielded by Danton ; hidden by 
 Legendre ; sheltered by the actress Fleury ; 
 sheltered by the priest Bassal ; proscribed, pur- 
 sued, and homeless, he still fought on, and the 
 publication of L 1 Ami du Peuple was not de- 
 layed for a single hour. By the name that he 
 had conquered, all Paris knew him. Woe to the 
 noble who was " recommended " by the remorse- 
 less " People's Friend ! " Woe to the suspect 
 who fell into the clutches of that crafty " Prussian 
 Spider 1 " Day after day he might be seen at 
 the Convention, cynical, injurious, venomous ; 
 dressed in a filthy shirt, a shabby, patched 
 surtout, and ink-stained velvet smalls ; his hair 
 knotted tightly with a thong, his shoes tied
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 3 
 
 carelessly with string. Men knew the enormous 
 head and pallid, leaden face ; the sloping, wild- 
 beast brows and piercing, tigerish eyes ; the 
 croaking, "frog-like mouth;" the thin lips, 
 bulged like an adder's poison-bag, men knew 
 the convulsive gestures, the irrepressible arm 
 with its fluttering proscription list, the strident 
 voice that cried incessantly for " heads, " now 
 for five hundred, now for five hundred thousand. 
 All Paris knew the triumvir Marat, who, in 
 concert with Robespierre and the Mountain 
 was slowly floating France in blood. 
 
 It is easy, from the abundant records, to con- 
 struct the story of his death. In July, 1793, the 
 citizen Marat was ill. For three years he had 
 struggled with a disorder, to which sooner or 
 later he must have succumbed. His physician, 
 although he sedulously attended him, had no 
 hope of saving his life. He had ceased to 
 appear at the meetings of the Convention ; 
 Robespierre and Danton had refused him " a 
 head or two." A Jacobin deputation, sent to 
 inquire into his health, reported that they had 
 found their brother Marat occupied unweariedly 
 for the public good. " It is not a malady," 
 said they, " but an indisposition which Mes- 
 sieurs of the C6te Droit will hardly catch. It is 
 a superabundant patriotism pressed and repressed 
 
 B 2
 
 4 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 in too small a body. The violent efforts that it 
 makes at escape are killing him." In a word, the 
 citizen Marat was dying of disease aggravated by 
 envy, disappointment, and unquenched lust of 
 blood. During the whole of June he had never 
 ceased with a head frenzied by strong remedial 
 stimulants, with a pen that pain caused to tremble 
 in his hand to cry feverishly for slaughter. 
 These were, in fact, those "exhalations of a 
 too active patriotism " that were killing the 
 People's Friend. 
 
 On the i ^th of July, at about half-past seven 
 in the evening, the citizen Marat was sitting in 
 his bath, writing. The citizen certainly affected, 
 perhaps actually enjoyed, the luxury of poverty. 
 A rough board laid across the bath served him for 
 a desk ; an unhewn block supported his inkstand. 
 The floor was littered with numbers of his jour- 
 nal, but the room was bare of furniture. A map 
 of France hung upon the wall, together with a 
 brace of pistols, above which was scrawled in 
 large, bold letters, " LA MORT." 
 
 By-and-by comes in a young man named 
 Fillet, bringing paper for the printing of UAmi 
 du Peuple, which was done in the author's house. 
 Marat asked him to open the window, approved 
 his account, and sent him away. As he came 
 out there was a kind of altercation between the
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 5 
 
 portress, who was folding sheets, and a hand- 
 some young lady, wearing a dark hat trimmed 
 with green ribbons. She held a fan in her hand, 
 and was complaining, in a singularly clear and 
 musical voice, that she had come a long journey 
 all the way from Caen to see the People's 
 Friend. It appeared from the conversation 
 that she had already called that day. "Had 
 he received her note asking for an interview ? " 
 The portress scarcely knew, he had so many. 
 At this moment appeared another woman 
 Simonne Evrard who, listening to the im- 
 portunities of the stranger, consented at last to 
 see if Marat would receive her. Marat, who 
 had read her note some twenty minutes pre- 
 viously, answered in the affirmative, and the 
 women showed her in. 
 
 It is not exactly known what took place be- 
 tween Marat and his visitor in their ten minutes' 
 interview. According to her after account, he 
 listened eagerly to the news from Caen, taking 
 notes " for the scaffold " the while. He asked 
 for the names of the Girondist deputies then 
 refuged at that place. She gave them, Guadet, 
 Gorsas, Buzot, Barbaroux, and the rest. " C'cst 
 bien ! Dans pen de jours, je les feral guillotiner 
 tons & Paris." His hour had come. Plucked 
 suddenly from her bosom, a bright blade flashed
 
 6 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 up, down, and struck him once in the chest. A 
 terrible blow for a delicate hand ! under the 
 clavicle, sheer through the lung, cutting the 
 carotid. " A moi, ma chbre amis, d moi!" he 
 shrieked. The next moment the room was full. 
 The young lady, coming out, was struck down 
 with a chair, and trampled on by the furious 
 women ; the guard came pouring in, and down 
 the street the news flew like wildfire that " they 
 were killing the People's Friend." 
 
 They lifted out the livid People's Friend, and 
 laid him on his bed. But he had spoken his 
 last. For an instant his glazed eyes turned upon 
 Simonne Evrard, who was weeping at his side, 
 then closed forever. Medical advice arriving 
 post-haste was yet too late. His death had 
 been anticipated by some eight days. 
 
 Paris was in consternation. Was this the be- 
 ginning of some dreadful vengeance upon the 
 patriots, some deep-laid Federalist conspiracy } 
 They could not tell. Meanwhile, beware of 
 green ribbons, and, above all, honour to the 
 People's Friend. Men meeting each other in 
 the street repeated like an old tragic chorus, 
 " // est mort, V Ami du Peuple ! I" Ami du Peuple 
 est mort /." The Jacobins dressed his bust in 
 crape ; the Convention voted him to the Pan- 
 theon, where Mirabeau made room for him.
 
 Mademoiselle de Corday. 7 
 
 Senators called upon David to paint his death. 
 " Aussi Ic fcrai-je, " answers he, with a magnif- 
 icent wave of the arm. Clubs quarrelled for 
 the body ; sections squabbled for the heart. An 
 immense concourse conducted him to his grave. 
 Twenty orators spoke over his tomb (decreed 
 by a beautiful spirit of pastoral simplicity to that 
 garden of the Cordeliers " where at evensong 
 he was wont to read his journal to the people "), 
 and scrupled not to link his name with names 
 most sacred. Sculptors were found to carve his 
 features with the glory of the Agonist, to twist 
 his foul headband into something of semblance 
 to a crown of thorns. His bust became a safe- 
 guard for the houses of patriots, his name a name 
 for new-born children. Robespierre grew sick 
 with envy, and was publicly twitted with his 
 jealousy. The citizen Marat was a martyr, and 
 the mob went mad about him. 
 
 After a time came the reaction. Some scrib- 
 bler studying the citizen's voluminous writings 
 discovered a passage advocating monarchy, and 
 straightway announced the fact. " What ! 
 Marat the People's Friend Marat a royalist? 
 Le miserable ! " The rabble rose forthwith, 
 burnt him in effigy, scraped up the ashes, hud- 
 dled them into an unworthy urn, and hurrying it 
 along with ribaldnvmd execration,- flun? it ipno-
 
 8 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 miniously down a sewer in the Rue Montmartre. 
 And this was the second funeral of the People's 
 Friend. 
 
 II. 
 
 WHILE the shrill voices of the newsvendors 
 " hoarse heralds of discord" were crying at 
 Paris street-corners, " VIA /' Ombre du Patriote 
 Mar-at ! Eloge Funebre de Mar-at ! Pand- 
 gyrique de Mar-at ! " while Adam Lux was 
 furtively placarding her as the Joan of Arc of the 
 Revolution, eager voices were curious con- 
 cerning the mysterious assassin. " A virago a 
 ce quil par ait ! Hommasse, garconniere nesl- 
 ce pas vrai, Citoyen .2" A monster, a fury, with 
 crime written in her face. Does n't Capuchin 
 Chabot expressly say a monster ? (i such a one 
 as Nature vomits forth now and then to the 
 mischief of humanity." This and more, more 
 energetically expressed. For, as may be seen, 
 the Parisians preferred their criminals in the 
 staring and unmistakable colours of the romantic 
 drama. 
 
 ' By-and-by the gossipers knew all that could 
 be told, and Paris to this day knows little more. 
 They heard that her name was Marie-Anne- 
 Charlotte de Corday d' Armont ; that her father
 
 Mademoiselle de Corday. 9 
 
 was a gentleman living at Argentan, of broken 
 means, and crippled with a law-suit ; that her 
 life was blameless and her beauty great ; that, 
 horrified by the revolutionary excesses, she had 
 conceived the idea of freeing France by killing 
 Marat ; that, uncounselled and alone, she had 
 set out from Caen to carry out her project, and 
 to fling away her being in return. These were 
 the undoubted facts of her history. It remains 
 to show how peculiarly her character, education, 
 and surroundings tended to thrust her onward 
 to that last act. 
 
 Her father, poor as we have said, had dis- 
 tributed his children amongst his wealthier re- 
 lations. Marie was assigned to an uncle at 
 Vieques, the Abbe de Corday, who took charge 
 of her education. He taught her to read in an 
 old copy, religiously preserved by himself, of the 
 works of their common ancestor, Corneille. 
 Already, in the pages of the seventeenth century 
 Roman, she found the germ of that republic 
 which became the ideal of her life. For, as she 
 subsequently said, she was a republican long 
 before the Revolution. 
 
 Her mother died. Then, at fourteen years 
 of age, she was invited to the Abbaye aux 
 Dames by the abbess, Madame de Belzunce. 
 In those days the itch political the current
 
 io Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 philosophy had invaded even the solitude 
 of the convents. Her true friends to her 
 motherless actually, virtually brotherless and 
 fatherless were her books. To her religious 
 exercises she added long readings, longer re- 
 veries. The seed that sprang in Corneille was 
 trained and fostered by her now " favourite au- 
 thors," Plutarch, Raynal. and the political works 
 of Rousseau. Like Madame Roland, she early 
 began to regret that she had not been born a 
 Cornelia or Paulina, to sigh for the " beaux 
 jours " of Sparta and of Rome. The French 
 were not worthy of her republic, with " its 
 austere virtues and its sublime devotion." 
 " Our nation," she said, " is too light, loo 
 trifling ; it needs retempering, regenerating, 
 needs to seek in the errors of the past the tra- 
 dition of the great and true, the beautiful and 
 noble ; to forget all those frivolities which beget 
 the corruption and degeneration of a people." 
 The rumours of atrocities ga-ira echoes 
 which reached her in her quiet retreat filled her 
 with horror and dismay. But while she de- 
 tested the men of the Revolution, she remained 
 true throughout life to her political theories. 
 
 In 1787 Madame de Belzunce died. Later 
 the convents were suppressed. The young girl, 
 after a short visit to her father, sought an asylum
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 11 
 
 with a cousin, Madame de Bretteville, who, as 
 she quaintly phrased it, did not know her visitor 
 " from Eve or Adam," but nevertheless received 
 her hospitably. Here she remained until her 
 final journey to Paris. 
 
 Madame de Bretteville lived in an old, gloomy, 
 semi-Gothic house, called the Grand Manoir. 
 Mile, de Corday mixed to a slight extent in 
 the Caen society, and more particularly with the 
 royalist family of Faudoas. She was remarked 
 for her beauty and sweetness. She was a good 
 musician, sketched cleverly, and talked with 
 great clearness and brilliancy. Her letters, 
 chiefly running on matters political, were handed 
 about with a certain ostentation by those who 
 received them. At this time she had many ad- 
 mirers, men who, years after, trembled when 
 they heard her name, a voice like hers ; but 
 her aversion to marriage was well known. An 
 anecdote related by her friend, Madame Loyer 
 de Maromme, will bring her before the reader. 
 
 Some of Madame de Bretteville's friends were 
 leaving Caen, and before their departure she 
 gave them a farewell dinner. Among the guests 
 was a M. de Tournelis, a cousin of Marie, who 
 regarded her with no slight admiration. The 
 dinner passed off well until the king's health 
 was proposed. Mile, de Corday remained un-
 
 12 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 moved. " What," said a lady, touching her 
 elbow, "you won't drink the king's health, 
 the king, so good, so virtuous r " "I believe him 
 virtuous," she returned in her low, sweet tones, 
 " but a weak king cannot be a good one ; he 
 cannot check the misfortunes of his people." A 
 dead silence succeeded this reply ; the health 
 was nevertheless drunk, and the company sat 
 down, visibly ill at ease. 
 
 A few moments after, the new bishop, Fau- 
 chet, made his entry into Caen, escorted by a 
 triumphal procession crying " Vive la Nation ! 
 ViveVEvtque Constitutionnel!" M. deTournelis 
 and M. de Corday, jun.. exasperated, attempted 
 to answer by cries of " Vive le Roi ! " and were 
 with great difficulty restrained from doing so. 
 M. de Corday silenced his son, and Marie 
 pulled M. de Tournelis to the back of the 
 room. 
 
 " How is it, 1 ' said she to the imprudent gen- 
 tleman, whose arm she still held, " how is it 
 that you are not afraid of risking the lives of 
 those about you by your intemperate manifesta- 
 tions ? If you would serve your country so, 
 you had far better not go away." 
 
 " And why, mademoiselle," he returned im- 
 petuously, " why did you not just now fear to 
 wound the feelings of your friends by refusing
 
 Mademoiselle de Corday: 13 
 
 to join your voice to a toast so French, and so 
 dear to all of us ? " 
 
 " My refusal," she replied, smiling, " can 
 only injure me. But you, without any use- 
 ful end, would risk the lives of all about you. 
 On whose side, tell me, is the most generous 
 sentiment ?" i 
 
 My refusal can only injure me. Springing, 
 perhaps, at first, from her solitary meditations ; 
 growing daily as she daily learns new details of 
 the excesses of the time, for during a two 
 years' space, she reads some five hundred pam- 
 phlets ; fortified by the indignant protest which 
 " her master," Raynal, addressed to the Con- 
 stituent Assembly, the ruling idea of Marie de 
 Corday had become a complete detachment 
 from her individual existence, a desire to offer 
 up her life, if her life could be useful to her 
 country. "What fate awaits us?" writes she 
 to Madame de Maromme. " A frightful des- 
 potism. If they succeed in curbing the people, 
 ' tis to fall from Charybdis into Scylla ; on 
 every side we suffer. . . . One can die but 
 once ; and what consoles me for the horror of 
 our situation, is that no one will lose in losing 
 me." Later, writing to Mile. Rose Fougeron 
 du Fayot of this terrible news of the king's 
 death (1793), she says that if she could, she
 
 14 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 would fly to England. " But," she adds, 
 " God holds us here for other destinies.'" The 
 idea was there, without the name. The arrival 
 of the proscribed Girondists at Caen found her 
 ripe for the execution of her scheme. 
 
 The struggle between the Mountain and the 
 Gironde had drawn to the close. The Monta- 
 gnards had accused the Girondists of conniving 
 with the foreigner. Guadet had replied by a 
 counter-charge against Marat, and Marat was 
 sent to that revolutionary tribunal which he 
 himself had instituted. Judges and jury rose 
 en masse, and, without more to-do, declared 
 him innocent. A mob formed on the spot 
 crowned him with oak, and, led by a sapper 
 named Rocher, brandishing his axe, carried him 
 on their shoulders to the Convention, before 
 which they defiled, according to custom, subse- 
 quently dancing the carmagnole, deputies, sap- 
 per, and all. This triumph of Marat was the 
 death-knell of the Gironde. Soon after, the 
 twenty-two deputies were proscribed, and 
 some eighteen of them took refuge at Caen. 
 
 The arrival of the discarded senators was 
 hailed with enthusiasm by Marie de Corday. 
 These were republicans after her own heart, 
 latter-day Romans, disciples of Brutus. They 
 would save the country from its miserable assas-
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 15 
 
 sins, restore the peace of which she dreamed. 
 The petition of a friend lent her a pretext for 
 introducing herself to Barbaroux. With the 
 " Antinoiis of Marseilles " (grown at this time 
 excessively fat and cumbrous, by the way) she 
 had numerous interviews, lengthy discussions 
 upon the position of affairs. It is probable that 
 in these last her project took its definite shape. 
 The Girondist orator painted to her, as he well 
 knew how to do, that sanguinary Montagnard 
 triumvirate, the remorseless and terrible Dan- 
 ton ; Robespierre, cunning as a Bengalee, cruel 
 as a tiger ; Marat, the jackal of the guillotine, 
 nauseous, ignoble, and drunk with blood, 
 Marat, too, who had compassed their downfall. 
 Mile, de Corday's choice was made. That 
 choice, however, she kept a secret. All knowl- 
 edge of her intent was subsequently strenuously 
 denied by the deputies who knew her while 
 at Caen. 
 
 The Girondists had hoped to organise a 
 counter-revolution, to form a departmental 
 army to march upon Paris, and insure the safety 
 of the Convention ; but the business languished. 
 " Unwearied orators, incorrigible Utopists," in- 
 consequent democrats, they were voices, and 
 nothing more. Puisaye had gathered two thou- 
 sand men at Evreux ; Wimpffen called for the
 
 1 6 four Frenchwomen. 
 
 volunteers at Caen. Seventeen men quitted the 
 ranks. The sight of this devoted little band 
 only served to strengthen the purpose of Mile. 
 de Corday. " A woman's hand should check 
 the civil war," she said; "a woman's hand 
 prepare the peace." She had already procured 
 a passport for Paris, already bade adieu to her 
 friends, and two days after, she left for the 
 capital. 
 
 None, we say, knew of her intent. Her os- 
 tensible purpose was the serving of an old con- 
 vent friend, for whom Barbaroux had interested 
 himself. Long after her death, little anecdotes 
 cropped up which show her inflexible decision. 
 Passing through the shop of the carpenter Lu- 
 nel, on the ground-floor of the Grand Manoir, 
 she suddenly, to the astonishment of the good 
 man, who was playing cards with his wife, broke 
 out into an involuntary " No ; it shall be never 
 said that a Marat reigned over France ! " and 
 struck the table sharply with her hand. Her 
 books she distributed, keeping perhaps an odd 
 volume of Plutarch out of all. To the carpen- 
 ter's son, Louis Lunel, she gave her portfolio 
 and her crayon-holder, bidding him not to for- 
 get her, as he would never see her more. When 
 saying good-bye to one of her friends, she 
 kissed the son, a boy of sixteen or thereabouts.
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 17 
 
 M. Malfilatre grew up to be a man ; and when 
 he died, as late as 1851, he still remembered 
 with pride the last kiss that Marie de Corday 
 ever gave on earth. 
 
 Then comes the anecdote of M. de Lamar- 
 tine, which is at least ben trovato. Fronting 
 the Grand Manoir lodged a family named La- 
 couture. The son of the house, a skilful musi- 
 cian, was used to practise regularly in the 
 mornings at his piano. He had noticed that 
 whenever he began to play, his opposite neigh- 
 bour thrust open her shutters, and sat some- 
 times half-hidden by the curtain, and apparently 
 listening to the music. Encouraged by the daily 
 apparition of the lady, the musician never failed 
 to play, Marie never to fling open the shut- 
 ters. This went on regularly up to the day 
 which preceded her departure for Paris. That 
 day she opened, then closed the shutters sud- 
 denly and sharply. On the morrow, they re- 
 mained obstinately shut. Slowly the notes stole 
 out upon the air, but the dark casement showed 
 no sign. Thus the musician knew that his lis- 
 tener was gone.
 
 1 8 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 III. 
 
 THERE are two trustworthy portraits of Mile. 
 de Corday. The one, attributed to Siccardi, and 
 preserved at Caen, represents a magnificent 
 young woman of three-and-twenty, in all the 
 exuberance, all the omnipotence of youth and 
 beauty, strong and yet graceful, elegantly 
 natural, modest above all, and still of a com- 
 pelling presence. Her hair, of a beautiful 
 chestnut tinge, escapes from the fluttering laces 
 of her Norman cap, and falls in torrents on the 
 white, close-drawn kerchief about her shoulders. 
 Her eyes were grey and somewhat sad, shaded 
 by deep, dark lashes. Her brows were finely 
 arched, her face " a perfect oval," and her com- 
 plexion " marvellously brilliant." " She blushed 
 very readily, and became then, in reality, charm- 
 ing." Add to these a strangely musical voice, 
 singularly silvery and childlike, and an expres- 
 sion of " ineffable sweetness," and you may 
 conceive something of that Marie de Corday 
 whom men loved at Caen. 
 
 The other, painted by Hauer in her cell, and 
 wearing originally the red shirt of the mur- 
 deress, is that Charlotte Corday of the Con- 
 ciergerie whom death is nearing quickly, stride
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 19 
 
 on stride. White-robed, white-capped, the fig- 
 ure is peaceful, statuesque, and calm. Some- 
 thing, perhaps, of severity sits upon the feat- 
 ures ; something, perhaps, of sorrow in the eyes. 
 Not sorrow for the deed ; rather the shadow 
 of her long-nursed purpose, the shadow of 
 those long, lonely hours in the Grand Manoir ; 
 the shadow of that loveless, hopeless, end- 
 less woman's life she values at so little. For 
 herself she is perfectly at ease. Her duty 
 done, what remains the rest may do. She has 
 prepared the peace. She had done " a thing 
 which should go throughout _all generations to the 
 children of the nation." 
 
 Peace "the Peace" is her paramount 
 idea. Her famous letter, written ostensibly to 
 Barbaroux, but in reality her political Apologia, 
 is dated the Second day of the Preparation for 
 Peace, " Peace at all price," she writes, " must 
 be procured." " For the last two days she has 
 enjoyed a delicious peace." There is a certain 
 forced gaiety a calculated flippancy an af- 
 fectation of stoicism about this manifesto which 
 is well-nigh painful. Yet she cannot wholly dis- 
 guise the elevation of the heroine, who feels " no 
 fear of death," who " values life only as it can 
 be useful to her kind." This letter, begun at the 
 Abbaye, finished at the Conciergerie, was never 
 
 - c 3
 
 20 Four frenchwomen. 
 
 delivered. In far simpler and far more touching 
 words she takes leave of her father : 
 
 Pardonnds-moi mon Cher papa d'avoir dispost 
 de mon Existance sans votre permission, Jai venge" 
 bien d'innocentes victimes, jai prevenu bien d'au- 
 tres ddsastres, le peuple un jour desabuse", se re- 
 jouira detre delivre" d'un tyrran, Si j'ai cherche" a 
 vous persuade^ que je passais en angleterre, ccsque 
 jesperais garder lincognito mais jen ai reconu 
 limpossibilite. Jespere que vous ne sere's point 
 tourmente en tous cas je crois que vous aurUs des 
 defenseurs a Caen, jai pris pour dcfenseur Gus- 
 tave Doulcet, un tel attentat ne permet nulle de- 
 fense Cest pour la forme, adieu mon Cher papa 
 je vous pne de moublier, ou plutdt de vous rejouir 
 de mon sort la cause en est belle, J'embrasse ma 
 sceur que jaime de tout mon cceur ainsi qui tons 
 mes parens, noublie's pas ce vers de Corneille. 
 
 " Le crime fait la honte et non pas Techafaud." 
 . C'est demain a huit hcures que I'on me juge, 
 ce 1 6 Juillet. 
 
 CORDAY. 
 
 Corde et ore was the motto of the Armont 
 family. Corde et ore before the dark bench of 
 the Salle de l'Egalit, she sustained the deed 
 that she had done. Impossible for the legal 
 catches of President Montane' ta^ surprise any
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 21 
 
 avowal of complicity. Answer after answer 
 comes from her, prompt, to the point, clear- 
 stamped with the image of truth, concise as a 
 couplet of Corneille. Like Judith of old, " all 
 marvelled at the beauty of her countenance." 
 The musical voice seemed to dominate the as- 
 sembly, the criminal to sit in judgment on her 
 judges. She had 'killed Marat for his crimes, 
 the miseries that he had caused. The thought 
 was hers alone ; her hatred was enough ; she 
 best could execute her project. She has killed 
 one man to save a thousand ; a villain to save 
 innocents ; a savage wild beast to give her 
 country Peace. " Do you think, then, to have 
 killed all the Marats ? " " This one dead, the 
 rest will fear perhaps." " You should be 
 skilful at the work," says crafty Fouquier-Tin- 
 ville. remarking on the sureness of the stroke. 
 " The monster ! He takes me for an assassin ! " 
 Her answer closed the debates like a sudden 
 clap of thunder. The reading of her letters 
 followed. "Have you anything to add?" 
 says Montane, as the one to Barbaroux was 
 finished. " Set down this," she returned : 
 " The leader of anarchy is no more ; you 
 will have peace." Nothing was left but to 
 demand her head, which the public accuser 
 did at once.
 
 22 four frenchwomen. 
 
 The form of a defence was gone through. 
 She had called upon a friend the M. Doulcet 
 of the letter to her father ; her request hr.d 
 never reached him. Montane named Chau- 
 veau de la Garde. But she had confessed 
 everything : there was nothing to say. Ho\v 
 could he please her best ? When he rose a 
 murmur filled the room. During the reading of 
 the accusation, the judge had bid him plead 
 madness, the jury to hold his tongue. Either 
 plan was contrived to humiliate her. La Garde 
 read in her anxious eyes that she would not be 
 excused. Like a gallant gentleman as he was, 
 he took his perilous cue. " The accused," he 
 said, " avows her crime, acknowledges its long 
 premeditation, confesses to all its terrible de- 
 tails. This immovable calm, this entire self- 
 abnegation in some respects sublime are not 
 in nature. They are only to be explained by 
 that exaltation of political fanaticism which has 
 placed a dagger in her hand. . . . Gentlemen 
 of the jury, I leave your decision to the care 
 of your prudence." 
 
 The face of the prisoner filled with pleasure. 
 All fear of that dreadful plea, insanity, was at 
 an end. She heard the sentence unmoved, 
 after which she begged the gendarmes to lead 
 her to La Garde. " Monsieur," she said, " I
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 23 
 
 thank you warmly for the courage with which 
 you have defended me, in a manner worthy of 
 yourself and of me. These gentlemen " 
 turning to the judges "confiscate my goods, 
 but I will give you a greater proof of my 
 gratitude : I ask you to pay my prison debts, 
 and I count upon your generosity." It need 
 hardly be said that the duty was religiously 
 performed. 
 
 During the trial "she had noticed a person 
 sketching her, and had courteously turned her 
 face towards him. This was Jacques Hauer, 
 an officer of the National Guard. As soon as 
 she returned to the prison, she expressed to the 
 concierge a desire to see him. The painter 
 came. She offered in the few minutes that re- 
 mained to her to give him a sitting, begging 
 him at the same time to copy the portrait for 
 her friends, calmly talking of indifferent matters, 
 and now and then of the deed that she had done. 
 One hour, then half-an-hour, passed away ; the 
 door opened, and Sanson appeared with the 
 scissors and the red shirt. " What, already?" 
 she asked. She cut off a long lock of her beau- 
 tiful hair and offered it to Hauer, saying that 
 she had nothing else to give him, and resigned 
 the rest to the executioner. Her brilliant com- 
 plexion had not faded, her lips were red as ever.
 
 24 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 She still " enjoyed a delicious peace." The 
 crimson shirt added so strangely to her weird 
 beauty that the artist put it in the picture ; but, 
 as we have said, it was afterwards painted out. 
 She asked Sanson if she might wear her gloves, 
 showing her wrist bruised by the brutal way in 
 which they had tied her hands. He told her 
 that he could arrange it without giving her pain. 
 "True," said she, gaily, "they have not all 
 your practice." 
 
 The cart was waiting outside. When she 
 came out the " furies of the guillotine " greeted 
 her with a howl of execration. But even on, 
 these, says Klause, a look of the wonderful eyes 
 often imposed a sudden silence. Calmly she 
 mounted the tumbril, and the horse set out along 
 the road it knew so well. Upright, unmoved, 
 and smiling, she made the whole of the journey. 
 The cart got on but slowly through the dense- 
 packed crowd, and Sanson heard her sigh. 
 "You find it a long journey?" he asked. 
 " Bah !" said she, serenely, with the old musical 
 voice unshaken, " we are sure to get there 
 at last." Sanson stepped in front of her as 
 they neared the scaffold, to hide the guillotine ; 
 but she bent before him, saying, " I have a 
 good right to be curious, for I have never 
 seen one."
 
 Mademoiselle de Cor day. 2$ 
 
 The red sun dipped down behind the Champs 
 Elysees trees as she went up the steps. The 
 blood rushed to her cheek ; the covering on her 
 neck was roughly torn away, and for an instant 
 she stood in the ruddy light as if transfigured. 
 Then, in a solemn silence, the axe fell. A hound 
 named Legros (a temporary aid of Sanson's) 
 lifted up the pale, beautiful head, with all its 
 frozen sweetness, and struck it on the cheek. 
 Report says that it reddened to the blow. But 
 whether it really blushed, whether the wretch's 
 hands were wet with blood, or whether it was 
 an effect of the sunlight, will now be never 
 known. The crowd, by an almost universal 
 murmur, testified its disapprobation. So died 
 Marie de Corday, aged twenty-four years, 
 eleven months, and twenty days. She was 
 buried in the Madeleine, and afterwards re- 
 moved to the cemetery Montparnasse. 
 
 Inseparable from her last hours is the figure 
 of the Mentz deputy and German dreamer, 
 Adam Lux. He saw her on the way to the 
 scaffold, went mad at the splendid sight, 
 grew^ drunk with death. He courted the axe ; 
 it was glorious to die with her for her. In a 
 long, printed eulogium, he proposed that she 
 should have a statue, with the motto, Greater
 
 26 Pour Frenchwomen. 
 
 than Brulus. He was tried, sent to the scaf- 
 fold, and went rejoicing, crying that " now, at 
 last, he should die for the sake of Charlotte 
 Corday." 
 
 But although the Mentz deputy glorified the 
 heroine, he did not glorify the deed; nor do we. 
 In the true spirit of that life-maker's motto, 
 to " nothing extenuate, or set down aught in 
 malice," we are bound to condemn her act. 
 Many a voice has been raised in defence of 
 political assassination. For us, the knife makes 
 the crime. Has it not been written, "Ven- 
 geance is mine, saith the Lord : / will repay " ? 
 The sin of Marie de Corday was twofold : sin, 
 as the shedding of blood is sin ; sin, as an usur- 
 pation of the Right Divine to punish. Nor did 
 the result justify the means. The Hydra of the 
 Terror had other heads than Marat's. He, in- 
 deed, was gone ; but had the guillotine no 
 jackals in Fouquier-Tinville and Robespierre ? 
 Was there no infamous Pere Duchesne to suc- 
 ceed to the Ami du Peuple f Enthusiasm no 
 doubt existed, but for her alone. Her prepa- 
 ration for Peace only further inflamed the Revo- 
 lutionary Tribunal, only hurried swifter to their 
 doom the unfortunate Twenty-two. It lifted 
 Marat into a bloodv martyrdom, sent to the
 
 Mademoiselle de Carday. 27 
 
 scaffold an unoffending Lauze de Ferret, a hap- 
 less Adam Lux. Yet while our colder reasons 
 condemn, our warmer hearts excuse. "We are 
 free, granting her error, to forgive its mistaken 
 motive, free to admire her unselfish devotion 
 and the sublimity of her end.
 
 MADAME ROLAND. 
 I754-I793.
 
 " Unt femme qui elail un grand homnte." 
 
 Louis BLANC. 
 
 " E!le avail 1'ame republicaine dans un 
 corps petri de graces et fa9onne par 
 une certaine politesse de cour." 
 
 KIOUFFE. Memoires d'un Dltcnii,
 
 MADAME ROLAND. 
 I. 
 
 TN the fall of 1863, a young man called upon 
 * a bookseller of the Quai Voltaire with a 
 bundle of dusty documents under his arm. 
 " They had been his father's ; they were noth- 
 ing to him : what would Monsieur give for 
 them t " Monsieur, looking over them, does 
 not think them very interesting, and declines 
 to bid for the treasure. " But," says the young 
 man, " there are others," and on two successive 
 occasions he appears with more yellow manu- 
 scripts. Finally the bookseller offers fifty 
 francs for the whole. " Fifty francs be it, 
 then ! " And the heaps being shaken, sorted, 
 and arranged, are found to include memoirs 
 of the Girondists Louvet and PeYion ; auto- 
 graph of the Girondist Buzot ; tragedy of 
 Charlotte Corday, by the Girondist Salles ; 
 and, best of all, five letters of the famous 
 Madame Roland. 
 
 Stranger still, this discovery was closely 
 connected with another made some months be- 
 fore, in March. A savant, well known for his
 
 32 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 revolutionary researches, prowling about in the 
 market at Batignolles, had happened upon the 
 miniature of a man, in sad dilapidation, and 
 dragging on the ground among a heap of vege- 
 tables. Its glass had gone, its canvas had curled 
 and cracked ; but behind the picture was a piece 
 of folded paper, cut to the size of the portrait, 
 and covered closely with Madame Roland's 
 well-known writing. These two discoveries, 
 taken in connection with each other, clasped 
 at once the hands of two hitherto unrecognised 
 lovers, and settled forever a question which had 
 been often asked, but never answered until 
 then. 
 
 Love in the earlier years of Madame Roland 
 had assumed a curious disguise. He had ap- 
 peared to her in the cap and gown of a school- 
 man, and had left his heart behind in the hurry 
 of packing. Self-educated and secluded, she 
 had ranged all literature, learning to read in 
 Plutarch, graduating in Rousseau, and both 
 had left their marks. Handsome, ardent, af- 
 fectionate, and sensitive, she had, nevertheless, 
 listened to the voice of her imagination and the 
 echoes of her studies until she had forgotten 
 her feelings. Love for her had become a mat- 
 ter of stoical calculation ; marriage a prudent 
 philosophical bargain, to be controlled by a
 
 Madame Roland. 33 
 
 maxim of the Portico, a quotation from Em'de. 
 At twenty-five she had married always en phi- 
 losophe a staid, stiff man of five-and-forty, an 
 inspector of manufactures at Lyons, who be- 
 came a minister at Paris, and scandalised the 
 court by his Puritan costume, his round hat, 
 and the strings in his shoes. Him she had 
 aided, elevated, and afterwards eclipsed. 
 Thrown suddenly into society, then queen of 
 a coterie of young and eloquent enthusiasts, 
 dreaming dangerously of being " the happiness 
 of one and the bond of many," she had early 
 discovered that " among those around her there 
 were some men whom she might love ; " and al- 
 though she strictly obeyed the dictates of duty, 
 it was shrewdly suspected that the some one 
 had been found. Who was it ? Who was the 
 " toi que je n'ose nommer" of her memoirs? 
 What passion was this from which her riper 
 years so narrowly escaped ? Michelet and 
 Sainte-Beuve had touched the traces of a 
 hardly-conquered inclination for Bancal des Is- 
 sarts. But who could it be ? Was it Barba- 
 roux, the " Antinoiis of Marseilles?" Was it 
 Bosc the devoted, Lanthenas the friend of the 
 family ? Was it Buzot ? It was Buzot. The 
 letters were to Buzot, the portrait was Buzot's, 
 and the riddle was solved. Already clearly
 
 34 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 drawn by her own faithful pencil, the great 
 truth-teller Time had added the completing 
 touches. No longer darkly seen, the stately 
 figure stands out upon the threshold of the 
 Revolution, secure in its singular nobility, with 
 all its errors undisguised, and makes " appeal 
 to impartial posterity." 
 
 When, in Moliere's play, the learned (and in- 
 tolerable) M. Thomas Diafoirus pays his court 
 to Mile. Angelique, he politely presents her 
 with an elaborate thesis against the circulation 
 of the blood, pour fairs son chemin. In 1790 
 the successful suitor came laden with the Con- 
 trat Social in his pocket, or to-morrow's decla- 
 mation in his hand. On that high road to ladies' 
 favour the surest passport was some florid phi- 
 lippic against Robespierre or Marat, some 
 high-pitched prospectus of the approaching 
 " Reign of Reason." Politics had invaded 
 all the salons, driving before them the sonnets 
 and bouts-rimds, effacing the idai of the Dorats 
 and Bernis. From the crowded court where 
 Madame de Stae'l swayed the sceptre, to its 
 faintest provincial copy, whose " inferior priest- 
 ess " fired her friends with her enthusiasm and 
 burnt her fingers with her tea, the political spirit 
 had swept down all before it. 
 
 Arrived in the capital in 1791, Madame
 
 Madame Roland. 35 
 
 Roland, already in her Lyons retreat a decided 
 republican, already a contributor to the patriot 
 journal of her friend Champagneux, already in 
 correspondence with the all-pervading Brissot, 
 flung herself headlong into the popular current. 
 Her house at Paris became a rendezvous for 
 Brissot's friends. The elegant hostess, who, 
 silent at first in the animated discussions, only 
 showed her scorn or her sympathy by a sudden 
 elevation of the brows, a glance of the speak- 
 ing eyes, became the " Egeria" of the gath- 
 ering Gironde. The little third-floor of the 
 Hotel Britannique, Rue Guenegaud, became 
 a very grotto of the Camenae. Round her 
 centre and soul of the coalition flocked its 
 famous and ill-fated leaders. Here nightly was 
 to be seen that journalist adventurer Brissot, its 
 hand as she was its head ; here, too, came the 
 unknown lover Buzot, " heart of fire and soul 
 of iron," drinking a perilous eloquence in those 
 beautiful eyes ; here, too, even Danton, even 
 Robespierre, made fitful apparitions, and, con- 
 spicuous among the rest, might be distinguished 
 the "grave" Petion, the philosopher Condor- 
 cet, and last but not least, her husband, the 
 " virtuous " Roland. 
 
 Hardly to be detached, therefore, from the 
 story of the Girondists, are the later years of 
 
 n 2
 
 3d Four frenchwomen. 
 
 Madame Roland's life. But our concern, at 
 present, lies more with the woman than the 
 politician more with Marie-Jeanne, or Manon 
 Phlipon the engraver's daughter, than the all- 
 conquering wife of the popular statesman. His- 
 torically, perhaps, a few words are necessary. 
 First a commissioner to the National Assembly 
 (1791), then Minister of the Interior under 
 Dumouriez (1792). Roland was materially in- 
 fluenced, ably aided, by his wife. When Louis 
 XVI. refused to sanction the decree for the 
 banishment of the priests, the minister, using 
 his wife's pen, addressed to the king a remon- 
 strance which procured his dismissal. 
 
 The Faubourg St. Antoine rose, the king was 
 removed to the Temple, and Roland was re- 
 called. Loudly and ineffectually he protested 
 against the savage September massacres in the 
 prisons. Then the pair became objects for the 
 enmity of the terrible Montagne. Madame 
 Roland was charged with corresponding with 
 England. The address and dexterity of her 
 defence baffled her opponents, Danton and Ro- 
 bespierre. At last Roland was arrested, but 
 escaped. His wife was thrown into the Abbaye, 
 liberated, re-arrested, and taken to St. Pelagic ; 
 thence to the Conciergerie, and thence, on 
 November 8th, 1793, to the guillotine.
 
 Madame Roland. 3? 
 
 During her imprisonment she wrote her per- 
 sonal memoirs (which she was not able to com- 
 plete), Notices Historiques of her political circle, 
 Portraits el Anecdotes, and the five letters to 
 Buzot which have already been mentioned. 
 
 II. 
 
 THERE are many reasons which render these 
 " confidences," as they have been called, singu- 
 larly genuine and authentic. Like many of the 
 records of that time, they were written under 
 the axe. At such a moment, to palter with pos- 
 terity to mince and simper to the future 
 were worse than useless. With the beautiful 
 Duchess of Gramont, who was asked whether 
 she had helped the emigrants, the authors seem 
 to say, " I was going to answer ' No, 1 but life 
 is not worth the lie." And one and all, writing 
 in the shadow of death, catch something of 
 sublime simplicity. In the present case there 
 arc other reasons still. When Madame Roland 
 planned her memoirs she was thinking of the 
 greatest work of her great model, Rousseau. 
 These," she said to a friend, " will be my 
 ' Confessions,' for I shall conceal nothing." A 
 mistaken idea, perhaps, but one which lends an
 
 38 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 additional value to the words. Lastly, we have 
 in them the first rapidly-conceived expression, 
 the accent, as it were, of her soul. As she 
 hurries on, driven by inexorable haste, now, at 
 some prison news, breaking into a patriotic de- 
 fence of her defeated party, now again seeking 
 peace in the half-light of her childish memories, 
 now listening to the supper-table clamour of 
 the actresses in the next cell, now in a sudden 
 panic tearing off the completed MS. to send to 
 Bosc, who will hide it in a rock in the forest of 
 Montmorency, one experiences all the charm of 
 an intimate conversation ; one feels that these 
 papers are, so to speak, proof impressions of 
 her state of mind. Composed with all the easy 
 fluency and something of the naive cultivation 
 of Sevigne, they were scribbled furtively, under 
 the eye of a gaoler, on coarse grey paper pro- 
 cured by the favour of a turnkey, and often 
 blotted with her tears. The large quarto vol- 
 ume of MSS. is still in existence. Its fine bold 
 writing is hardly corrected, never retouched. 
 The writer had no time for erasure, revision, or 
 ornament, and barely time to tell the truth. 
 
 Manon Phlipon hardly recollects when she 
 first learned to read. But from the age of four 
 she reads with excessive avidity, devouring every- 
 thing with a perfect rage for study. Rising at
 
 Madame Roland. 39 
 
 five, when all is quiet in the house, she slips on 
 her little jacket, and steals on tiptoe to the table 
 in the corner of her mother's room, there to re- 
 peat and prepare her lessons for the patient mas- 
 ter whom she nicknamed M. Doucet. She is 
 never without a book. Now it is the Bible, or 
 the Lives of the Saints ; now Telemachus, or 
 the Memoirs of Mile, de Montpensier ; now the 
 Recovery of Jerusalem, or the Roman Comique 
 of Scarron. Tasso and Fendlon set the child- 
 brain on fire ; as she reads she realises. " I 
 was Erminia for Tancred, and Eucharis for Te- 
 lemachus." Plutarch so captivated her at nine 
 that she carried him to church instead of mass- 
 book. Nothing is too dry ; " she would have 
 learnt the Koran by heart if they had taught 
 her to' read it ; " she astonishes her father by 
 her knowledge of heraldry ; even tries the Law 
 of Contracts ; and, later still, sets to and copies 
 out a treatise on geometry plates and all. 
 
 Nor was this one of the pale little prodigies 
 whose intellect has been developed at the ex- 
 pense of their physique. Manon had excellent 
 health, and these are not all her accomplish- 
 ments. This child, who read serious books, 
 explained the circles of the celestial sphere, 
 handled crayon and burin, and was at eight the 
 best dancer in a party of children older than
 
 4d four Frenchwomen. 
 
 herself this child was quite at home in the 
 kitchen. " I should be able to make my soup 
 as easily as Philopoemen [in her favourite Plu- 
 tarch] cut his wood ; but no one would imagine 
 that it was a duty fitted for me to perform." 
 There is a secret in that last sentence which 
 may be safely recommended to housekeepers 
 in posse. 
 
 In those days, perhaps more than now, a first 
 communion was a great event in a child's life. 
 At eleven years of age her religious studies have 
 so mastered her, that with tears in her eyes she 
 begs her parents "to do a thing which her con- 
 science demands, to place her in a convent," in 
 order to prepare for it. It is all here. She has 
 charmingly painted her convent friends the 
 colombe gemissante, Sister Agatha, the Sisters 
 Henriette and Sophie Cannet (her correspon- 
 dence with whom from 1772 to 1786 is 
 " the origin of her taste for writing"), the con- 
 vent life, a fete, and the installation of a novice. 
 
 Withuhe Dames de la Congregation she stayed 
 a year. A succeeding year was spent with her 
 "grandmother in the He St. Louis. The little 
 household is pleasantly touched in ; her grand- 
 mother brisk, amiable, and young at sixty- 
 five ; her grandmother's sister, Mademoiselle 
 Rotisset, pious, asthmatic, always seriously
 
 Madame Poland. 41 
 
 knitting, and everybody's servant. Then she 
 describes her visit to a great lady, whose airs 
 and patronage disgust the little republican who 
 has already begun to reason shrewdly upon 
 nobility of intellect and questions of degree. 
 
 " ' Eh! bonjour,' said Madame de Boismorel 
 in a loud, cold voice, and rising at our approach. 
 ' Bonjour, Mademoiselle Rotisset.' (Mademoi- 
 selle ? What ! My bonne maman is here Ma- 
 demoiselle ? ) ' Well, I am glad to see you ; 
 and this pretty child is your grandchild, eh ? 
 Ah, she will improve. Come here, mon occur 
 here, next me. She is timid. How old is 
 she, your grandchild, Mademoiselle Rotisset } 
 She is a little dark, but the base of the skin is 
 excellent ; 't will clear before long. She 's al- 
 ready well shaped. You should have a lucky 
 hand, little woman ; have you ever put into the 
 lottery ? ' 
 
 " ' Never, madame ; I don't like games of 
 chance.' 
 
 " ' I believe you ; at your age one expects 
 to be certain. What a voice ! how sweet and 
 full it is ! But how grave we are ! Are n't you 
 a wee bit ddvote I ' 
 
 " ' I know my duties, and I try to fulfil them.' 
 
 " ' Capital 1 You want to be a nun, don't 
 you : '
 
 42 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 " ' I ignore my destiny; I don't yet seek to 
 determine it.' 
 
 "'Bless me, how sententious! She reads, 
 your grandchild, Mademoiselle Rotisset ": ' 
 
 " ' It is her greatest pleasure ; she reads half 
 the day.' 
 
 " ' Oh, one can see that ; but take care that 
 she does n't become a blue-stocking 't would 
 be a thousand pities.' " 
 
 Thereupon the elder ladies fell to talking of 
 their little maladies of Abbe This and Coun- 
 cillor That and, in order to sprinkle the 
 sprightly conversation with the requisite spice 
 of scandal, of a certain beauty somewhat "on 
 the return," whose misfortune it is to forget 
 everything except her age. Meanwhile Made- 
 moiselle Manon, perched on the edge of her 
 seat, feels very hot and uncomfortable, and 
 sorely disconcerted by the cold boldness of the 
 great lady's eyes which stare at her every now 
 and then over her plastered cheeks. The proud 
 little student of Plutarch, mutely measuring her- 
 self with her entertainer, sickens at her patron- 
 age and assumption of superiority, as later she 
 will sicken at " that lank yellow hackney,"' Ma- 
 demoiselle de Hannaches, whose pretensions to 
 pedigree are everywhere respected as later 
 she will sicken at the obsequious mummeries
 
 Madame Roland. 43 
 
 of Versailles. She has already the germ of all 
 that fierce hatred of royalty which was so un- 
 worthy of her ; and although in the memoirs 
 she has doubtless clothed her recollections with 
 something of the amplitude of her maturer style, 
 the picture in feeling is vividly true. For the 
 Manon of the visit and the chronicler of later 
 years are not at all unlike. Her character was 
 of a composition that hardens early, and be- 
 tween r the child of twelve and the woman of 
 forty the difference is not so great. 
 
 When at last she returned to her parents, 
 Mademoiselle Phlipon was a handsome girl 
 well-nigh a woman. She has no plan or aim but 
 knowledge and instruction. " For me happi- 
 ness consists in application." " The mornings," 
 she writes to Sophie Cannet, " slip away some- 
 how in reading and working. After meals I go 
 into my little study overlooking the Seine. I 
 take a pen, dream, think, and write." Else- 
 where she says, " My violin, my guitar, and 
 my pen are three parts of my life." In this way, 
 and with a little gardening, the quiet days glide 
 on, varied only by a Sunday jaunt to lonely 
 Meudon, " with its wild woods and solitary 
 pools," or by the rarer visit to friends. 
 
 In this quiet retirement her character is forming 
 fast. Doubt begins to trouble her. Her con-
 
 44 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 fessor, somewhat alarmed, hastens to provide 
 her with all the apologists of her faith ; from 
 these she learns the names of its assailants, and 
 procures them too. An endless course ! Phi- 
 losopher and politician Voltaire and Diderot, 
 Descartes and Malebranche, the System of Na- 
 ture and the Treatise on Tolerance she reads 
 them all. She writes, too, CEuvrcs de Loisir and 
 Divers Reflections, little tracts on love and lib- 
 erty. And as she was Eucharis for Telemachus, 
 so with each author she is successively per- 
 haps all at once Jansenist, Cartesian, Stoic, 
 Deist, and Sceptic. 
 
 Rousseau comes at last as the choice dish 
 the peacock's brains of this mixed entertain- 
 ment. Nothing but the Plutarch at nine had 
 captivated her like Rousseau at twenty-one. 
 She has " found her fitting food," she says. 
 " A little Jean-Jacques will last her through the 
 night." She stigmatises as " souls of mud " the 
 women who can read the Nouvelle Hdloise with- 
 out at least wishing to be better. Nor was she 
 singular. At every turn of these Revolutionary 
 records one traces the influence of the Genevese 
 philosopher. Now we do not care much about 
 that pseudo-sentiment for us the windy rhet- 
 oric of St. Preux is simply illegible for us 
 Julie d'Etanges is a prdcieuse ridicule. If at
 
 Madame Roland. 45 
 
 all we remember that half-crazed genius, that 
 self-indulgent, " self-torturing sophist," it is as 
 the man who wrote pathetically of paternity, 
 and sent his children to the Foundling as the 
 man who took Vitam impendere vero for his 
 motto, and "romanced" like Mendez Pinto 
 as the man who allowed his theft of a paltry 
 ribbon to ruin a poor girl who loved him, and so 
 forth. Yet it is impossible to estimate the ex- 
 tent of his power over his contemporaries. This 
 opinion of Madame Roland's was the opinion 
 of j Madame de Stael of nearly all the world 
 in those days ; and to this influence must be 
 attributed the somewhat declamatory style of 
 the present memoirs ; to it, also, the fact that, 
 excellent as they are, they have their undesirable 
 pages. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the handsome 
 young bourgeoise, with her natural graces, and 
 with talents far above her class, was without ad- 
 mirers. " All the youth of the quarter," says 
 she pleasantly, and not at all insensibly, "passed 
 in review" without success. Her mother, con- 
 scious, perhaps, of her approaching end, is anx- 
 ious to see her daughter settled. Her father 
 wishes to marry her well, from a pecuniary point 
 of view, and thinks of little else ; but mademoi- 
 selle has her own model of male humanity, and
 
 46 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 it is not the neighbouring butcher in his Sunday 
 coat and gala lace. " Have I lived with Plu- 
 tarch and the philosophers simply to marry a 
 tradesman with whom I have nothing in com- 
 mon ? " Marriage she conceives ' ; to be the 
 most intimate union of hearts." Her husband 
 must excel her. Nature and the law give him 
 the pre-eminence ; she should blush if he did 
 not deserve it. Nevertheless she will not be 
 commanded. " Ah ! " says the quiet mother. 
 " you would conquer a man who did your will 
 and dreamt it was his own." This is, perhaps, 
 the truth. 
 
 She has painted some portraits from that un- 
 successful throng. There is Monsieur Mignard, 
 " the Spanish Colossus, red-handed as Esau ; " 
 Monsieur Mozon, the widower, with the wart on 
 his cheek ; the butcher with his lace ; Monsieur 
 Morizot de Rozain, who writes d\isse% belles 
 chases, and gets as far as the third explanatory 
 letter ; La Blancherie, who has some far-off 
 touch of our ideal, upon which we build a deal 
 of favour; Gardanne, whom we all but marry; 
 and a host who are not placed at all in the race 
 for this young lady's hand. 
 
 Every now and then comes papa with " some- 
 thing new," as he terms it, and mademoiselle 
 sits down to compose, in papa's name, a polite
 
 Madame Roland. 47 
 
 little refusal in the usual form ; and when at last, 
 and not at all in a hurry, arrives Monsieur Ro- 
 land de la Platiere, savant and litterateur 
 lean, bald, and yellow very grave, very aus- 
 tere "admiring the ancients at the expense 
 of the moderns " who leaves his MSS. in her 
 keeping, and who endeavours to enliven a five 
 years' courtship by the study of simple equa- 
 tions we are afraid that she married a theory 
 and not a husband. 
 
 " Let still the woman take 
 An elder than herself : so wears she to him, 
 So sways she level in her husband's heart." 
 
 But not twenty years older, surely ? Here, 
 at least, the model union was not happy. In 
 her scheme of domestic happiness and conjugal 
 duties she had ignored one ingredient, and that 
 not the least love. For her own peace of 
 mind esteem was not enough. That she de- 
 voted herself to Monsieur Roland that he 
 loved her with an ever-increasing affection 
 we have no lack of words to prove ; but we 
 have also words to prove that Roland's twenty 
 years of seniority and naturally dominant tem- 
 perament were at times very irksome to his 
 wife. As she perceived this feeling growing 
 she became more and more obstinate in her 
 "duty" no shadow of a name with her.
 
 48 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 She carried out her maxim, "that marriage is 
 an association of two individuals, in which the 
 woman takes charge of the happiness of both," 
 to the letter. Her husband, growing gradually 
 querulous and infirm, learned to depend on her 
 for everything, and she wearied of the thrall. 
 Then, too, and last of all, comes the all-absorb- 
 ing passion for another. We are led to sup- 
 pose that Roland knew of this. Loving, 
 sensitive, he saw that his wife was sacrificing 
 herself to him, and he could not bear it. 
 "Happiness," she says, "fled from us. He 
 adored me, I gave myself up to him, and we 
 were miserable." 
 
 How shall we speak of this terrible love that 
 flamed up at last through the philosophic crust 
 that beats and burns in every line of the 
 letters to Buzot ? Frankly, we wish they had 
 never been discovered. At least, we know 
 that she combated it, that she redoubled her 
 attention to her husband, and we find her wel- 
 coming prison with the prospect of death as the 
 only solution of the struggle between her pas- 
 sion and her duty. And it is something that 
 she honoured the marriage tie in revolutionary 
 France, where love was at its lowest, where 
 divorce was dangerously easy, and where almost 
 every feature by which marriape is accounted
 
 Madame Roland. 49 
 
 honourable was laughed at as the worn-out pre- 
 judice of a passed-away rigime. " We have 
 every reason to believe," says a noble critic, 
 " that Madame Roland would have been in- 
 dulgent to the frailties of others, yet towards 
 herself she remained inexorable, and never once 
 admitted the possibility of forsaking her old 
 husband, or becoming a faithless wife, save in 
 her heart. This inconsistency, so completely 
 the reverse of what has been generally pictured, 
 may, we think, be counted to such a woman as 
 a virtue." 
 
 Did Madame Roland stray as far as the nature 
 and extent^of her theological and controversial 
 studies would lead us to infer t We scarcely 
 think so. Although she confesses to having by 
 turns participated in the " exigence of the deist, 
 the rigour of the atheist, the insouciance of the 
 sceptic," she perhaps holds these opinions no 
 longer than she was Eucharis or Erminia. For 
 the time being, whatever the creed, she is earn- 
 est and sincere. But the early impressions do 
 not |wear out so easily. She is still moved, 
 penetrated by the celebration of divine worship ; 
 she still sedulously hears mass if only " for the 
 edification of her neighbour." Out of the ma- 
 terialist atmosphere of the time, she believes. 
 Her hopes instinctively turn heavenward ; it is
 
 5O Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 only in the study that she doubts. " U esprit a 
 beau s'avancer, il nc va jamais aussi loin que le 
 cceur." Let it be recorded, too, that she never 
 fails to raise the simple prayer she quoted, and 
 that the last words of her summary words 
 carefully expunged by her republican first edi- 
 tor are, " Dieu juste, re$ois-moi ! " 
 
 We do not propose to attempt her physical 
 portrait. Beyond her own written description, 
 and the scattered testimonies of contemporaries, 
 the fact is that no satisfactory picture exists. 
 The painting of Heinsius at Versailles has the 
 dark, intelligent eyes, the abundant hair, " tied 
 up with blue ribbon," the nose, somewhat large 
 at the end " qui me faisait quelque peine," and 
 other material points of resemblance ; but " it 
 shows her," says M. Dauban, " in one only of 
 her aspects." " Four artists" (this is Cham- 
 pagneux, her second editor) "failed to paint 
 her ; the fifth effort, which I reproduce here, is 
 the happiest ; there is certainly a resemblance, 
 but an infinitude of details are lost." " None 
 of my portraits," she herself informs us, "give 
 any idea of me, except, perhaps, a cameo by 
 Langlois." The truth is that the artists drew 
 her in repose, and repose was not her strength. 
 She had more mind than face, " more expression 
 than feature," as she puts it. Always eloquent,
 
 Madame Roland. 51 
 
 when animated she became beautiful, and carried 
 everything before her by her fluency, her enthu- 
 siasm, the rhythm of her periods, and the beauty 
 of her voice. Miss Helena Williams, Lemontey, 
 Riouffe, Beugnot, all testify to the charm of 
 her conversation. " Camille [Desmoulins] was 
 right," she says somewhere in the memoirs, " in 
 his surprise that, at my age, and with so little 
 beauty, I had what he calls admirers." " I never 
 spoke to him." The patient biographer, who 
 only sees her dimly through the dust of shaken 
 documents, is more unfortunate than the unfor- 
 tunate Camille. 
 
 Nor can we hope to do much more than 
 vaguely outline her mental portrait. Man by 
 the head and woman by the heart, she is appar- 
 ently a chapter of antitheses a changing com- 
 pound of sense and sensibility, of reason and 
 feeling. Ranging through light and shadow, 
 " mobile as the air that she breathes ; " now 
 forced by politics into hard, unreasoning hatreds, 
 now loving with a passion beyond control ; now 
 So masculine that we distrust her, now so femi- 
 nine that we admire ; naturally graceful, un- 
 pleasantly affected ; " Puritan and rigorist with 
 overflowing youth and spirit, active and ambi- 
 tious with the tastes of an ascetic ; " more 
 bourgeoise than patrician, more patrician than 
 
 E 2
 
 52 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 bourgeoise, the catalogue is one of opposi- 
 tions innumerable, of delicate distinctions to be 
 marked only by the practised pencil of an 
 Arnold or a Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 And yet, with all her war of head and heart, 
 with all her fallacies and those were mostly 
 of the time, not hers she is still a very noble 
 woman, albeit nourished " on Logics, Encyclo- 
 pddies, and the Gospel according to Jean- 
 Jacques." In Carlyle's words, " she shines in 
 that black wreck of things like a white Grecian 
 statue." Her life is grandly closed by the 
 antique dignity of her death. 
 
 III. 
 
 THERE is an odd fiction current of those days, 
 the invention probably of La Harpe, called the 
 " Prophecy of Cazotte." In 1788, so runs the 
 story, a fashionable company is assembled at 
 the house of a great man, a nobleman and acade- 
 mician. All [talking France is there, laced, 
 gallant, and frivolous. To and fro in the crowd 
 go the dapper abbs, murmuring mysteriously at 
 ladies' ears, like bees at bells of flowers. Very 
 polished are the petits-mattres, very radiant the 
 marquises Some one. be-ribboned..with a hand
 
 Madame Roland. 53 
 
 upon his heart, is quavering out a love-song of 
 Aline or Claudine. Here Chamfort, brilliant 
 and cynical, is relating a questionable anecdote, 
 to cheeks that do not blush, to eyes that do not 
 droop. Backwards and forwards the winged 
 words flutter, and glitter, and sting. For this 
 is the age of wit, of the chasse aux iddes, of facile 
 phrases, and of rapid thoughts. History is 
 settled forever in the twinkling of a fan ; theology 
 is rounded to an epigram ; philosophy is a pretty 
 firework with a cascade of sparks. But the all- 
 engrossing topic is the " grand and sublime 
 revolution " that approaches the Reign of 
 Reason that is to be. 
 
 There is but one among the guests who sits 
 apart, Cazotte, the mystic and Martinist. A 
 little scorn is curved about his lips. Perhaps 
 he sees farther than the rest. They rally him, 
 and he begins to prophesy, amidst peals of 
 laughter. " You, Monsieur de Condorcet," 
 says he, " will die upon the flags of a prison, 
 after having taken poison to cheat the execu- 
 tioner. You," and the finger pointed to Cham- 
 fort, " will open your veins." All have their 
 turns, Bailly, Malesherbes, Vicq-d'Azyr, and 
 the rest. " But the women ? " asks the Duchess 
 of Gramont ; " we are lucky, we women, to go 
 for nothing in your revolutions." " 'T is not
 
 54 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 that we don't meddle in them, but it seems we 
 shall not suffer." " You are wrong, mesdames," 
 returned Cazotte, "/or this time you will be 
 treated like the men." 
 
 It was true. In all the combats, all the expia- 
 tions of the Revolution, they had their place. 
 In all the clamour of party, and all the solitude 
 of captivity, their voices were heard. Most 
 nobly, too, they played those painful parts, and 
 none more nobly than Madame Roland. " They 
 kill us," said Vergniaux of Marie de Corday 
 " they kill us ; but at least they teach us how 
 to die." 
 
 Upon the arrest of her husband, Madame 
 Roland had risen, almost from a bed of sickness, 
 and hurried to the Convention to demand his 
 release. But she could see no one : the Con- 
 vention was in a state of siege. Outside, the 
 court of the Tuileries was swarming with armed 
 men ; inside, the hall presented a scene of hope- 
 less clamour and confusion. Vergniaux, who 
 comes at last, is paralysed and helpless. When, 
 after long waiting, she returned home, she found 
 that Roland had escaped. At seven the next 
 morning she was herself arrested, and taken into 
 the Abbaye, where she was placed in the cell 
 afterwards occupied by Brissot and Mil?, de 
 Corday.
 
 Madame Roland. 55 
 
 She ' took her prison for an hermitage," as 
 Lovelace sings. Never, we think, were those 
 true words so truly realised. She bore the 
 whole of her captivity a durance so vile that 
 Beugnot longed for death in preference al- 
 most without a murmur. Only once, and then 
 borne down by the miseries of her friends, she 
 thought of suicide, when suicides were common. 
 As soon as she got within the walls she set her- 
 self to conquer her position. Forgetful alike of 
 her companions, of her narrow, stifling cage 
 forgetful, too (and this was hard !) of the foul 
 lampoons of Hebert, which, by a refinement of 
 cruelty, were screeched each day beneath her 
 very windows, she buried herself in her books. 
 " I have my Thomson," she writes to Buzot 
 from the Abbaye, " Shaftesbury, an English dic- 
 tionary, Plutarch, and Tacitus." " I have taken 
 to drawing again, I read the classics, and I 
 am working at my English." Bosc sends her 
 flowers from the Jardin des Plantes. With 
 these she so enlivens her retreat, that the aston- 
 ished gaoler declares he shall call it in future the 
 " Pavilion of Flora." At St. Pelagic, to which 
 she is soon removed, she is rather better lodged. 
 " My cell," she writes again, " is just large 
 enough to allow of a chair beside the bed. 
 Here, at a tiny table, I read, and draw, and
 
 56 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 write." Here, too, she often sits with the con- 
 cierge, has even for a time the use of a piano, 
 for so do her keepers favour her. And every- 
 where her patient serenity wins her friends, 
 where friends are rarest, everywhere her quiet 
 dignity commands respect. " All the prison 
 officials," says Champagneux, " treated her with 
 the greatest deference." Her cell is " a temple." 
 " Never in his life has he admired her as he 
 does now." 
 
 At last she is transferred to the Conciergerie, 
 the ante-chamber of the guillotine. Riouffe and 
 Count Beugnot have both left records of her 
 latter days in this, the latest of her prisons. 
 " When she arrived," says the former, " without 
 being in the prime of life, she was still very 
 charming ; she was tall and elegantly shaped ; 
 her countenance was very intelligent, but mis- 
 fortune and a long confinement had left their 
 traces on her face, and softened her natural 
 vivacity. Something more than is usually found 
 in the looks of women painted itself in those 
 large black eyes of hers, full of expression and 
 sweetness. She spoke to me often at the grate, 
 calling the beheaded Twenty-two ' our friends, 
 whom we are so soon to follow.' We were all 
 attentive round her in a sort of admiration and 
 astonishment ; she expressed herself with a
 
 Madame Roland. 57 
 
 purity, with a harmony and prosody, that made 
 her language like music, of which the ear could 
 never have enough." " Her conversation was 
 serious, not cold ; coming from the mouth of a 
 beautiful woman, it was frank and courageous 
 as that of a great man, . . . and yet her servant 
 said, ' Before you, she collects her strength ; 
 but in her own room she will sit three hours 
 sometimes, leaning upon the window, and 
 weeping.' " 
 
 All sorts of company met in the Conciergerie. 
 Where once the cells held ten, some thirty were 
 crammed. The Duchess of Gramont was hustled 
 by a pickpocket, sisters of charity were huddled 
 with the scum of the Salpetriere. But here, 
 amongst the lowest "of the low, the room of 
 Madame Roland became an " asylum of peace." 
 " If she descended into the court," says Beug- 
 not, "her presence alone restored order; and 
 these women, whom no other power controlled, 
 were restrained by the fear of her displeasure. 
 She gave pecuniary help to the most needy ; to 
 all, counsel, consolation, hope." Round her 
 they clustered as round a tutelary goddess, while 
 they treated the Du Barry like the worst of 
 themselves. When she left they clung about 
 her, crying and kissing her hand, "a sight," 
 says he again, " beyond description." It was
 
 58 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 only an eight days' sojourn that she made, but 
 many of the inmates of those dark dungeons 
 grieved sincerely when she died. 
 
 The famous Chauveau de la Garde, chivalrous 
 to Quixotism, always ready for that dangerous 
 honour of disputing his victims to Fouquier-Tin- 
 ville, came to offer her his advocacy, but she 
 declined it, refusing to peril his head in her de- 
 fence. She went to the tribunal wholly dressed 
 in white, " her long black hair hanging down 
 to her girdle." Coming back, she smilingly drew 
 her hand over the back of her neck, to signify to 
 her fellow-prisoners that she was doomed. She 
 had thanked her judges for having thought her 
 worthy to share the fate of the great and good 
 men. they had murdered, " and will try," so she 
 says, "to show upon the scaffold as much 
 courage as they." 
 
 She did so. At the foot of the guillotine, it 
 is said, she asked for pen and paper to write the 
 strange thoughts that were rising in her, but her 
 request was not granted. Her sole companion 
 in the tumbril was a certain Lamarque, an 
 assignat-printer. She cheered and consoled 
 him almost brought back his failing courage 
 by her easy gaiety. To shorten his suffering 
 she offered to give up to him her right of dying 
 first ; but Sanson pleaded adverse orders.
 
 Madame Roland. 59 
 
 " Come, you can't refuse the last request of a 
 lady," and Sanson yields. As they were buck- 
 ling her on the plank her eyes caught sight of 
 the great statue of Liberty which stood on the 
 Place de la Revolution. " O Libertt, comme 
 on fa joute ! " murmured she. . . . And in the 
 cemetery of the Madeleine there is no stone to 
 show where lie the ashes of the Queen of the 
 Gironde. 
 
 There were two men living at that hour who 
 did not long survive the knowledge of her death. 
 One, all stunned and shattered, leaves his place 
 of refuge, walks out four leagues from Rouen, 
 and, sitting down quietly against a tree, passes 
 his sword-cane through his heart, dying so 
 calmly that he seems, when found next morning, 
 " as if asleep." The other, at St. Emilion, 
 " loses his senses for several days." He, too, 
 tracked from place to place, and wandering 
 away from his pursuers, is found at last in a 
 cornfield near Castillon, half-eaten by the wolves. 
 The first of these men was her husband, Roland ; 
 the second was her lover, Buzot.
 
 THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE. 
 1749-1792.
 
 " Ette itait aussi bonne qnejolie." 
 
 MEMOIRS OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.
 
 THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE. 
 
 I. 
 
 T N one of his Spectator papers Mr. Addison 
 * has remarked of some of the characters in 
 certain heroic poems that they seem to have 
 been invented for no other purpose than to be 
 killed, and that they are celebrated for nothing 
 more than the being knocked on the head with 
 a species of distinction. The same may be said 
 of many of the Revolutionary heroes and hero- 
 ines. They appear to have suddenly started 
 from the obscurity of insignificance, or, it may 
 be, of self-imposed seclusion, into one luminous 
 moment under the guillotine. Of their life, too, 
 perhaps " nothing became them like the leaving 
 of it." It is difficult, therefore in many cases 
 impossible to complete their stories. The 
 author of the biography which, in the present in- 
 stance, constitutes our most important source of 
 information, is too skilful and eiegant a penman 
 to be either dull or tedious, while he is far too 
 clever not to endeavour to conceal the slender 
 nature of his stock-in-trade. But one cannot 
 but feel that his wealth of words smacks some-
 
 64 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 what of the questionable hospitality of the Bar- 
 mecide ; and it is not easy to avoid remarking 
 that his book is not so much the " life " as the 
 " death " of the Princess de Lamballe. M. de 
 Lescure's respect has prompted him to raise a 
 votive temple where the simple mural record 
 would suffice, and we confess ourselves not a 
 little impressed by the dexterity with which he 
 has expanded his meagre data into a goodly vol- 
 ume of nearly five hundred pages. For, in 
 truth, the material for a memoir, properly so 
 called, does not seem to exist. The present 
 specimen commences with the marriage of 
 Madame de Lamballe in 1767 : we catch 
 glimpses of her between the woods of Rambouil- 
 let and the Court of Versailles now by the 
 side of the queen, now by the Duke of Pen- 
 thievre until 1791, and we have travelled half 
 through our volume. Autobiographical records 
 there are none. Her correspondence was small 
 indeed, she does not appear to have been 
 imbued with that furor scribendi which was 
 characteristic of so many of her contemporaries, 
 and the pair of notes her biographer prints have 
 no especial individuality beyond a certain bird- 
 like, caressing tenderness. There is nothing 
 here to plead for her against the insinuation of 
 Madame de Genlis that she was not wittv, for
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 65 
 
 certainly it is nowhere recorded that she ever 
 said a quotable thing nay, she even died with- 
 out uttering the bon mot or " last word " which 
 appears to have been an historical necessity of 
 the times. But she is one of those the very 
 silences of whose lives are earnest of their excel- 
 lence, one of the good people whose histories 
 are unwritten because they were good people. 
 Like the Virgilia to whom we have later likened 
 her that Virgilia who, in the whole of Corio- 
 lanus, speaks scarcely thirty verses, and yet 
 remains, nevertheless, perhaps the most distinctly 
 womanly of all Shakspeare's exquisite women 
 she has little need to talk in order to be known. 
 We recognise her merit by the few testimonies 
 of her contemporaries, by the total absence of 
 any authentic accusation, by the " She was as 
 good as pretty " of a man like the Prince de 
 Ligne, by the " good angel " of the peasants of 
 Penthievre ; and, looking back to Hickel's por- 
 trait, a blonde, beautiful head, with the lux- 
 uriant hair which once, they say, broke from its 
 bands and rippled to her feet looking back, 
 too, not ignorant of the days in which she lived, 
 we dare not choose but believe that this delicate 
 girlish woman of forty, round whose lips, despite 
 the veil of sadness in the eyes, a vague infans 
 pudor still lingers like a perfume, was, what 
 
 F
 
 66 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 we account her to have been, a very tender, 
 loving, and unhappy lady. We shall endeavour, 
 with M. de Lescure's assistance, to relate what, 
 with any certainty, can be ascertained about 
 her. 
 
 II. 
 
 IN 1767 the Duke of Penthievre, grandson of 
 that haughty Athena'is de Montespan, who was 
 supplanted in the favour of the Grand Monarque 
 by the Duchess de Fontanges, had asked Louis 
 XV. to choose him a wife for his son, the Prince 
 de Lamballe. The king named the Princess of 
 Savoy. Communications had passed between 
 the courts of France and Sardinia, and the young 
 prince, reassured by a portrait of the lady, had 
 lent himself with docility to his father's proposal. 
 The contract was forthwith signed, and the 
 Princess entered France, arriving on the }oth 
 of January at Montereau. Here she was en- 
 countered by a gaily-dressed and mysterious 
 page " with ardent and inquiring looks," who 
 respectfully offered her a magnificent bouquet, 
 and in whom she afterwards, with a pleasant 
 surprise, recognised her future husband. The 
 marriage took place on the same day in the 
 chapel of the Chateau de Nangis, the home of
 
 The Princess de Lamb. ille. 67 
 
 the Count de Guerchy. On the 5th of Feb- 
 ruary she was presented at Versailles, and a 
 prompt court poet called attention to the pair in 
 a classic duet, where the nymph of the Seine, 
 consoling Hymen in his lament upon the de- 
 generacy of the age, bids him rejoice at the 
 brilliant promises of the union of Marie-Therese- 
 Louise de Savoie-Carignan and the " son of 
 Penthievre. 11 
 
 Was it so happy, this smiling union of seven- 
 teen and twenty ? It was not. The prime 
 element of fidelity was ignored " marriage 
 was no longer a tie " in the court of Louis XV. 
 The Prince de Lamballe was young and ardent, 
 branded with the terrible Bourbon temperament, 
 freshly emancipated from that over-strict edu- 
 cation which foreruns excess, and, if not wicked, 
 very weak. What could be anticipated of the 
 Telemachus, with a possible Richelieu for 
 Mentor, a Chartres or a Lauzun for co-disciple, 
 and an easily-conquered Eucharis at the Comedie 
 Francaise ? Only two months of married life, 
 and the absences from the bergene as it was 
 called grew sadly frequent, rumours of petit- 
 soupers reached Rambouillet, whispers of a 
 certain Mile, la Forest, of a certain Mile, la 
 Chassaigne. It is Fielding's story over again, 
 this one of Marie de Lamballe a story of short
 
 68 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 returns to domesticity, of endless wifely for- 
 bearance and womanly forgiveness ; the story of 
 Amelia, without the repentance of Booth, and 
 with a terrible catastrophe. Only the husband of 
 a year, and Louis de Bourbon had run the swift 
 course which ends in a disgraceful death. He 
 died in 1768, before he was twenty-one. For 
 his epitaph we must turn to Bachaumont's 
 Memoirs. <; The English Gamester,"" says the 
 chronicler of Mme. Doublet's nouvelles A la 
 main, " was played here yesterday under the 
 name of Beverley, a Tragddie Bourgcoise, imi- 
 tated from the English. Although the name of 
 the Duke of Orleans had been announced the 
 day before, it did not appear in the bill, which 
 signifies that the prince, in his sorrow, could not 
 attend the representation or, at least, was only 
 there incognito, on account of the death of the 
 Prince de Lamballe." Bachaumont does not 
 say in express terms that the duke did go to 
 the play incognito. But, to us, the careless 
 frankness of the phrase seems to paint admirably 
 the skin-deep delicacy, the cambric-handkerchief 
 commiseration of these great gentlemen at Ver- 
 sailles, of whom their own journalist can make 
 a remark at once so naive and candid. 
 
 The princess, who had nursed her husband 
 tenderly in his fatal illness, had pardoned his
 
 The Princess ae eamballe. 69 
 
 transgressions and won back his confidence and 
 affection, now " sorrowed for him as if he had 
 deserved it." The widow of eighteen retired 
 to Ramboulllet, near Versailles, the seat of her 
 father-in-law, the Duke of Penthievre, to whom, 
 bereaved of his son and anticipating a separation 
 from his daughter, Mile, de Bourbon, she for 
 the future consecrated her life. At this time 
 she had regained the natural elasticity of her 
 spirits, although already subject to the fits of 
 melancholy which later became more frequent. 
 The woods of Rambouillet rang often to the 
 laughter of the two princesses whom the ascetic 
 duke, " serious and austere only for himself/' 
 called laughingly " the pomps of the century." 
 To one of them, says his valet Fortaire, he 
 would sometimes pleasantly whisper after the 
 balls at Passy, " Marie la folle, how many 
 quadrilles have you danced to-day ? " 
 
 We could willingly linger, did space permit, 
 upon this figure of the charitable Duke of Pen- 
 thievre, that contrasts so strongly with the De 
 Lignes and Lauzuns of his day ; this " bourru 
 blenfaisant " and founder of hospitals, who had 
 fought at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and who 
 lived the life of a Benedictine ; this kindly prac- 
 tical castellan of Cre'cy and Sceaux, of whom 
 his secretary Florian had written
 
 70 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 "Bourbon ti 1 invite pas les folatres bergeres 
 
 A s 1 assembler sous les onneaux; 
 II ne se mile pas a leur dames Icgeres, 
 Mais il leur donne des troicpcaux; " 
 
 we could willingly recall the .legend of this 
 "king of the poor " whom the famished royal 
 hunt stormed in his solitude at Rambouillet. to 
 find him girt with a white apron, flourishing a 
 ladle, and preparing the soup of his pensioners ; 
 this inconsequent landholder, who salaried the 
 poachers on his estate to prevent a recurrence 
 of their fault, who hunted for benefactions with 
 all the ardour of a sportsman, and who, in 
 company with Florian, had cleared the country 
 round of paupers, and created a positive dearth 
 of wretchedness and misery, and whose known 
 charities and virtues had preserved him through 
 the worst days of the Terror, to die at last 
 broken by sorrow but strong in faith in his 
 home at Vernon, where the popular memory still 
 lovingly cherishes its recollection of the good 
 white head and open hand of the old Duke of 
 Penthievre. But we have another name at the 
 commencement of our paper. 
 
 Madame de Lamballe was suddenly drawn 
 from the seclusion of Rambouillet by an intrigue 
 which had no less an object than to place her 
 upon the throne of France. In 1764 three
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 71 
 
 years before the great Queen-courtesan la 
 marralne du rococo Madame de Pompadour, 
 had passed away, painted and powerful even on 
 her deathbed, and her royal master had watched 
 her exit with a heartless jest. This was followed, 
 in 1765, by the death of the sombre, serious 
 dauphin. For a time a qualified decency pre- 
 vailed at the court, but when at last, in 1768, the 
 quiet queen faded from the half-light of her life 
 to the darker obscurity of the grave, all the 
 Versailles plotters and panders set eagerly to 
 work to provide the king with a successor. 
 Two parties formed : the one striving to decoy 
 him back to the paths of decency, and to provide 
 a worthy successor to the pious Maria Leczinska; 
 the other attempting to attract the degraded and 
 irresolute monarch to a new Cotillon III. The 
 first, a strong court party, was headed by the 
 king's favourite daughter, Madame AdelaYde, 
 together with the Noailles family (the Duchess 
 of Penthievre had been a Noailles), and sought 
 to advance Madame de Lamballe to the queenly 
 dignity ; while the second, led by the king's old 
 tempter, Richelieu, and his Chiffinch, the famous 
 Lebel, endeavoured to introduce a certain dis- 
 reputable Mademoiselle Lange into the royal 
 household. The latter attempt was successful ; 
 partly, perhaps, because the princess, who seems
 
 7 2 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 to have been a passive and unsolicitous agent in 
 the matter, was not calculated, from the very 
 sweetness and excellence of her nature, to entice 
 the sluggish sensualist who governed France 
 back to the self-respect that he had forgotten ; 
 partly, again, because the less reputable schemers 
 were aided by the opposition of the great min- 
 ister Choiseul, who dreaded the ascendency of 
 the family of Noailles, and who was, moreover, 
 strengthened by the disappointed ambition of 
 his sister, Madame de Gramont, who had herself 
 so rumour averred aspired without success 
 to the falling mantle of the Pompadour. Thus 
 to the wife of the peculator D' Etioles followed 
 a more scandalous successor. Mademoiselle 
 Lange began her reign as the Countess Du 
 Barry, and the princess went back to her Ram- 
 bouillet solitude. 
 
 But Choiseul, although he had secretly op- 
 posed the party of Madame Adelaide, would 
 not bend to the new favourite, ennobled as she 
 was. He had been pliant enough to Madame de 
 Pompadour the clever robine and art-patroness 
 whom Maria Theresa had condescended to 
 flatter but he would not imitate her further 
 and treat with this gaming-house syren this 
 impure " Venus sprung from the scum of the 
 Parisian deep " this Countess Du Barry. We
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 73 
 
 have no intention of digressing into the web 
 of that long intrigue in which the selfish king, 
 blinded with luxury, and muttering parrot-like 
 on his crumbling throne the temporising Apres 
 moi le deluge which Pompadour had taught him, 
 yielded at last to Maupeou and Terrai, and exiled 
 his sole capable minister to his home at Chan- 
 teloup. But before his exile he had completed 
 one negotiation which concerns us, the marriage 
 of the dauphin, on the 24th April, 1770, to Marie 
 Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria. 
 
 Almost from this date commences the friend- 
 ship of Marie Antoinette and Marie de Lamballe. 
 The warm-hearted, high-spirited dauphiness, 
 seeking for sympathy in the strange formal court 
 where so many looked askance, passed by the 
 Picquignys, Saint-Megrins, and Cosses, to find 
 in the princess a friend at once equal and tender, 
 at once disinterested and devoted ; a favourite 
 who asked no favour, except for charity. Hence- 
 forth, in all her expeditions to Little Trianon, the 
 queen is accompanied by her inseparable com- 
 panion ; henceforth, in all these sledge parties, 
 which were the delight of the Parisians, peeps 
 from fur and swansdown. in its Slavonian toquet 
 and heron tuft, the flower-like head of the Prin- 
 cess de Lamballe. Begun at the weekly balls of 
 the Duchess de Noailles, strengthened by the
 
 74 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 princess's newly-revived office of Superintendent 
 of the Queen's Household, paling perhaps a little 
 before the rising star of the Countess de Po- 
 lignac, but knit again by sorrow and tempered 
 by tears, the friendship remained the most last- 
 ing and characteristic of all the friendships of 
 the unhappy queen, a bond to be broken only 
 by death. 
 
 MM. de Goncourt, with that happy pen which 
 seems to write in colours, have sketched her 
 portrait at this period with a felicity of expres- 
 sion which we frankly confess ourselves as 
 unable to emulate as to translate : 
 
 " La Reine, ccmmc tonics les femmes, se dd- 
 fendait mal conlre ses yeux. La figure et la tour- 
 nure n'dtaient pas sans la toucher, el les portraits 
 que nous sont rcslds dc Madame de Lamballe 
 disent la premiere raison de sa faveur. La plus 
 grand beaute" de Madame de Lamballe, tftait la 
 sdrdnltd de sa physionomie. Ldclair mcme de 
 ses yeux dtait tranquille. Malgre" les secousses et 
 la fievre d'une maladie ncrveuse, il n'y avail pas 
 un pll, pas line nuage sur son beau front, ballu de 
 ccs longs cheveux blonds qui bouclcront encore 
 autour de la pique de Scplembre. Italienne, Ma- 
 dame de Lamballe avail les graces du Nord, ct 
 elle ndlait jamais plus belle qu'en Iraineau, sous 
 Li marlre el Vhermine, le leinl fondle" par un rent
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 75 
 
 de ncige, on bicn encore lorsque, dans I' ombre 
 d'ttn grand chapeau de paille, dans un nitage de 
 linon, die passail comme un. de ces rSves donl le 
 pcintre anglais Lawrence promene la robe blanche 
 sur les verdures mouille'es.'" 
 
 So much for her physical portrait in 1775. 
 Y/ith regard to the moral aspect, we shall speak 
 faithfully reproducing contemporary judg- 
 ments wherever they can be given without reser- 
 vation or comment in the words of the Baronne 
 d'Oberkirch, as quoted by M. de Lescure : 
 " She is a model," says this lady, " of all the 
 /irtues, and especially of filial piety to the father 
 of her unfortunate husband, and of devoted af- 
 fection to the queen. . . . Her character is gay 
 and na'i've, and she is not perhaps very witty. 
 She avoids argument, and yields immediately 
 rather than dispute. She is a sweet, good, ami- 
 able woman, incapable of an evil thought, bene- 
 volence and virtue personified, and calumny has 
 never made the slightest attempt to attack her. 
 Sh'e gives immensely more, indeed, than she 
 can, and even to the point of inconveniencing 
 herself, for which reason they call her ' the 
 good angel ' in the lands of Penthievre." 
 
 We see her now as clearly as we shall. 
 We know this delicate lady with the bouche mig- 
 nonnc, and beautiful eyes, this good angel of
 
 76 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 Sceaux and Rambouillet, this alternate Allegro 
 and Penseroso of the landscapes of Le N6tre, 
 this queen's friend, " who only sought credit in 
 order to be useful, and favour in order to be 
 loved." 
 
 Charitable and pious, gentle and lovable, she 
 stands before us like a realisation of the noble 
 old motto of devotion Tender and True. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE eighteenth century, towards its latter por- 
 tion especially, has one marked and curious 
 feature that of credulity. " Its philosophers," 
 says Louis Blanc, " had overworked analysis. 
 They had over-sacrificed sentiment to reason 
 the happiness of belief to the pride of sci- 
 ence. The intellect, keeping solitary watch, in 
 the silence of the other faculties, grows wearied 
 and timorous ; it ends by doubting everything 
 by doubting even itself, and seeks oblivion at 
 last in the illusions of imagination. Faith 
 rests from thought, and the repose would differ 
 but little from death were it not that the sleep is 
 filled with dreams. . . . Thus after Voltaire a 
 reaction was inevitable, and the besoin de croire, 
 disconcerted but unconquered, reappeared in 
 fantastic forms."
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 77 
 
 " Populus vult decipi ; decipialur" The de- 
 mand for miracles was speedily followed by the 
 supply of prophets. After the sober, slow-pro- 
 gressing car of science there suddenly appeared 
 another equipage, flaunting and noisy, with a 
 jingling jack-pudding, and a steeple-hatted, spec- 
 tacled practitioner the chariot of the quack. 
 Next to Voltaire and Diderot, Condorcet and 
 D'Alembert, came Dulcamara, vaunting his phil- 
 tres and elixirs, his hypo-drops and his electu- 
 aries, holding the keys of the Future, and 
 discovering the secrets of Life and of Death. 
 The Parisians, enervated and febrile, greedy 
 of novelty, cut from their beliefs, and drifting 
 they knew not whither, caught eagerly at the 
 promises of every charlatan, when charlatans 
 abounded. They cherished and credited the 
 impudent sharper and picaresque Don Juan 
 Casanova. They believed in the ChevaliHre 
 D'Eon de Beaumont, who persuaded them that 
 he was man or woman as he pleased. They 
 flocked to the Count de St. Germain, who had 
 lived for several centuries, who declared that he 
 had been intimate with Francis the First, and 
 that he had known Our Lord. They flocked 
 to the mountebank Giuseppe Balsamo, who flu- 
 ently informed them that he was born in the 
 middle of the Red Sea ; that he had been
 
 78 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 brought up among the Pyramids, and that there 
 abandoned by his parents he had learned 
 everything from a wonderful old man who had 
 befriended him. They flocked to the salle des 
 crises of Mesmer and D'Eslon ; they flocked to 
 the magnetised elms of the Marquis de Puyse- 
 gur. They crowded the meetings of masonic 
 lodges, and listened eagerly to the obscure elo- 
 quence of Saint Martin, the mystic doctrines of 
 Adam Weishaupt. Everywhere the quacks mul- 
 tiplied and the dupes increased, the prophets 
 prophesied and the miracles abounded : the 
 Parisians wished to be deceived, and were 
 deceived. 
 
 From this blindness of her century Madame 
 de Lamballe was not wholly exempt. But we 
 may fairly assume that she sought neither to 
 alleviate an unsound mental activity nor to sat- 
 isfy a prurient craving after the supernatural. 
 If, as is reported, she had been found at the 
 stances of D'Eslon, she visited the " enchanted 
 vat" only with the vain hope of obtaining relief 
 from the nervous malady for which she had so 
 long desired a remedy. If, again, she was per- 
 suaded to become a masoness, we are expressly 
 told that she had been taught to see in such a 
 step only a means of furthering the ends of 
 charity ; for at that time, as remarks one of her
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 79 
 
 reviewers, justice, honour, tolerance, and lib- 
 erty were in all mouths. " It was a very deli- 
 rium of benevolence and hope." And it was 
 not easy to detect, through the philanthropic 
 jargon, the fanciful rites and seeming harmless 
 festivals of the secret societies, those silent and 
 pertinacious powers that were slowly sapping 
 the bases of things. It would have been hard 
 to believe in 1781 that the Utopian banquets 
 of the lodges, with their " good wine and bad 
 verse," could cover the laboratories and asylums 
 for nearly all the indefinite ambitions all the 
 unquiet yearnings of the times. Even the king 
 himself, whose timorous instincts led him to dis- 
 trust private meetings, was reassured by the prin- 
 cess's accounts of these harmless associations, 
 that dispensed pensions to the clinking of 
 glasses, and numbered among their members 
 all the greatest nobles of the court. It is clear, 
 too, that the queen, like Madame de Lamballe. 
 saw in that sealed masonic mystery, from which 
 issued at last, as from the fisherman's jar in the 
 Arabian tale, one of the most terrible genii of 
 the Revolution, nothing more than an eccentric 
 institution for the practice of philanthropy. Yet 
 for all this, as M. de Lescure affirms, it was here 
 that the affair of the " Necklace " had its birth 
 and its elaboration. It was here, too, that many
 
 8o Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 a sleepless French Casca sharpened in the se- 
 curity of secrecy the daggers [of '93. These 
 lively bacchic " Rondes de Tables" with their 
 "amiable sisters 1 ' and assiduous "brothers," 
 their Virtues and their Graces, Cythera and 
 Paphos, were, after all, but the lighter preludes 
 to the Carillon National and the sanguinary 
 Carmagnole. 
 
 With the exception of her appointment as 
 Superintendent of the Queen's Household, her 
 affiliation to freemasonry appears to have been 
 the most important occurrence in the life of 
 Madame de Lamballe up to 1785 the most 
 important, of course, of those which have been 
 recorded. In 1777 she had been admitted into 
 the Loge de la Candeur, and in 1781 she ac- 
 cepted the dignity of grand mistress of the 
 Mere Loge Ecossaise d' Adoption. We shall 
 not reproduce the mediocre but complimentary 
 verses which were chanted to the fair assembly 
 on that occasion by their devoted brother and 
 secretary, M. Robineau de Beaunoir. In 1778 
 she lost both parents ; and in the December of 
 the same year, just after her father's death, we 
 find her by the queen's bedside at the birth of 
 the future Madame Royale "the poor little 
 one not the less dear for being undesired." 
 
 In 1781 the Mere Loge Ecossaise distin-
 
 The Princess de Lainballe. 81 
 
 guished itself by great manifestations of charity 
 in honour of the birth of the much-desired dau- 
 phin. " I have read with interest," writes the 
 queen in November to the princess, who was 
 nursing the old Duke of Penthievre, " what has 
 been done in the masonic lodges over which you 
 presided at the commencement of the year, and 
 about which you amused me so. ... I see 
 that they do not only sing pretty songs, but that 
 they also do good. Your lodges have followed 
 in our footsteps by delivering prisoners and mar- 
 rying young women." Early in the succeeding 
 year we find Madame de Lamballe by the side 
 of Madame Adelaide, at the banquet given by 
 the city of Paris to the king in celebration of the 
 same event, when there was placed before the 
 company "a Rhine carp which had cost 4,000 
 francs, and which his majesty had the bad taste 
 to disapprove of. We catch a glimpse of her 
 under the girandoles of Versailles at the ball 
 given to the Russian grand duke (afterwards 
 Paul I.) and his duchess ; and again "en 
 costume de batclicre de rile Amour" at the 
 Chantilly fetes arranged by the Prince de Conde 
 in honour of the same illustrious personages. 
 
 But despite the affluence of words with which 
 her biographer has surrounded his subject, the 
 record of her life during this period has little 
 
 G
 
 82 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 more than the barren precision of a court cir- 
 cular. During all this time, M. de Lescure 
 assures us, she was actively charitable, but her 
 personal history is of the kind of which it has 
 been cleverly said, " Nous cnlrevoyons, nous ne 
 voyons pas." 
 
 From its commencement to 1778, the friend- 
 ship of Madame de Lamballe and the queen had 
 been ^cloudless. After this, for reasons which 
 have remained obscure, but which are possibly 
 referable to the rising favour of the Countess 
 Jules de Polignac, it had slightly languished. 
 But in 1785 it revived again never to be inter- 
 rupted except by death. In 1785 the queen had 
 sore need of such an aid. The shades were 
 thickening round the throne, and she stood al- 
 most alone. She had lost her ally and adviser, 
 Choiseul. Her court had thinned to a little 
 circle of friends. Outside, the people hated 
 her, and made the Aulrichienne responsible for 
 every popular misfortune. Outs'ide, the whole 
 kennel of libellers and chronicle-makers, ballad- 
 mongers and pamphleteers, were in full cry. 
 She was upon the eve of that great scandal of 
 the " Necklace ; " she was to be shaken by the 
 death of the Princess Beatrice -~ she was to be 
 shaken by the death of the dauphin. One can 
 comprehend how readily, with such a dismal
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 83 
 
 present and such a darkling future, she turned 
 to the friend " who had retired without a mur- 
 mur, and who returned without complaint. 
 ' Never believe, 1 she said to her, ' that it will 
 be possible for me not to love you it is a habit 
 of which my heart has need.'" 
 
 From 1786 to 1789, nevertheless, the life is 
 again barren of incident. In the middle of 1787 
 if we may believe a letter of Horace Wai- 
 pole she paid a visit to England. In May, 
 1789, she assisted at the opening of the States 
 General, and during the whole of that year 
 seems to have been engaged, on behalf of 
 Marie Antoinette, in negotiations which had 
 for their object the conciliation of the Orleans 
 party. On the 7th of October she learned 
 at the Chateau d'Eu, where she was staying 
 with the Duke of Penthievre, of the transfer 
 of the royal family to the Tuileries. On the 
 8th she joined the queen. 
 
 The great event of 1791 is the unsuccessful 
 flight to Varennes. Simultaneously with the 
 escape of the royal fugitives the princess left 
 the Tuileries and sailed from Boulogne, in all 
 probability direct to England; That she came 
 to this country at this tinle there appears to 
 be no doubt. In one of the little notes printed 
 by M. de Lescure \nfac-simile, with its "patles 
 
 G 2
 
 84 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 de mouches" handwriting, she speaks or being 
 about to visit Blenheim, Oxford, and Bath, and 
 makes great fun of an English lady whom she 
 had heard that morning reading TVma at Brigh- 
 ton. Peltier, too, writing his Dernier Tableau 
 here in 1792-93, speaks of her having been at 
 London and Bath after the Varennes affair. 
 
 The prime motive of her visit, her biographer 
 supposes, was to obtain the protection of the 
 English government for the royal family. The 
 queen had already sent a messenger possibly 
 messengers with this view, but, according to 
 Madame Campan, without any better result 
 than the unsatisfactory declaration of Mr. Pitt, 
 that " he would not allow the French monarchy 
 to perish." The office of secret ambassadress 
 was now intrusted to Madame de Lamballe. 
 " The fact results," says M. de Lescure, 
 " from the following passage of a letter of the 
 queen [to her sister, Marie Christine, Duchess 
 of Saxe Teschen, September, 1791], which ac- 
 quaints us, sadly enough, with the results which 
 she obtained," and from which we quote the fol- 
 lowing lines : " The queen and her daughters 
 received her favourably, but the king's reason is 
 gone. [La raison du Roi est dgarte.] It is the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer who governs, and 
 he said cruelly, and almost in express terms to
 
 The Princess tie Lamballe, 85 
 
 the princess, that we had brought our misfortune 
 on ourselves." 
 
 The passage, no doubt, is explicit. But, curi- 
 ously enough, this very passage is one of those 
 which were selected to prove the untrustworthy 
 nature of the collection of Marie Antoinette's 
 letters published by Count Paul d'Hunolstein. 
 We had indeed been struck some months ago by 
 the singular way in which the queen speaks of 
 Pitt, but we can lay no claim to the discovery 
 of anything else. A writer in the Edinburgh 
 Reviciv for April, 1865, in an examination of the 
 correspondence, points out the several blunders 
 into which the concoctor (for we must assume 
 it so) of the letter meddling with this, to him, 
 terra incognita of England, has necessarily 
 fallen. They are, shortly, as follows : First 
 and foremost, George III. was not out of his 
 mind at this time. He was taken ill in October, 
 1788; resumed government in March, 1789; 
 had no return of his malady for several years, 
 and was certainly in full possession of his fac- 
 ulties in August, 1791. Secondly, the queen, 
 who must have known better, would hardly have 
 called Pitt the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for, 
 although he held the office, he was known by his 
 other title of First Lord of the Treasury ; and 
 thirdly, it is improbable that he would have
 
 86 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 Spoken so harshly and discourteously to a mem- 
 ber of that royal family for whom his interven- 
 tion was requested. Other proofs follow of the 
 neutral attitude of England, and of the fact that 
 Marie Antoinette had at the time sources of 
 communication with this country besides Ma- 
 dame de Lamballe. The first of these reasons 
 is certainly the best. It might indeed be possi- 
 ble for the queen to have made the second mis- 
 take, and possibly Pitt's curt answer might have 
 become "almost in express terms 1 ' unfeeling 
 and discourteous after passing through two 
 ladies who dreaded and disliked him one so 
 much that she " could never pronounce his 
 name without a shiver." Combined in some 
 five lines, however, they have a singularly apoc- 
 ryphal appearance, and, all things considered, 
 the passage as a pilce justificative of the ob- 
 ject of Madame de Lamballe's visit, and what 
 her biographer calls " her attempts to tame and 
 soothe the surly selfishness of English policy," 
 can scarcely be held to be convincing. 
 
 M. de Lescure has striven, with all the elo- 
 quence of enthusiasm, to impress upon us the 
 transformation that affection now wrought in the 
 modest and retiring princess. He would have 
 her to have become an active diplomatist a 
 delicate feminine Machiavel, "a modest Iris,"
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 87 
 
 yielding only to fearful disadvantage. A propos-, 
 of the before-mentioned Orleans negotiation, he 
 enlarges upon this idea ; and again A propos of 
 the English mission, he calls upon us to admire 
 the " sang-froid " of the " discrete" the " insin- 
 uante," and the " touchanlc LambctUe," as she 
 " grapples with the distrustful oppositions of 
 English egoism." But the hard historical Grad- 
 
 O O 
 
 grind cries for facts. Our author allows that 
 details are wanting for the first attempt, while 
 the picturesque diplomatic attitude of the princess 
 in England seems to repose entirely upon the 
 foregoing doubtful extract from the letter of the 
 queen. That she interested herself to the best 
 of her ability for the friends she had left in so 
 strange and sad a strait, and the Marats and 
 Gorsas and Frerons gave her every credit for 
 her efforts, is natural ; but we like better to 
 think that it was not her mdlicr that, to use 
 Mr. Carlyle's forcible words, " the piping of the 
 small silver voice " was ineffectual " in the black 
 world-tornado." To a Frenchman it may seem 
 painful that she had not the conspicuous excel- 
 lence of Frenchwomen or Italians. We like 
 her better so. We like her best restless and 
 pining in her English exile, longing to " throw 
 herself into the tiger's jaws" to " die by the 
 side of the queen."
 
 88 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 The queen, however, did not wish her to re- 
 turn. Letter after letter reiterated this desire 
 now as a command, now as an entreaty. " I 
 know well that you love me, and I have no need 
 of this new proof. Quclle bonheur que d'etre 
 aimte pour soi-mcmc ! . . . In the new misfor- 
 tunes that overwhelm me it is a consolation to 
 know that those one loves are in safety. . . . 
 Don't come back, my dear Lamballe," the letters 
 repeat. ... "I can only tell you not to come 
 back ; things are too dreadful, but I have cour- 
 age for myself, and I don't know whether I 
 could have it for my friends such a one as 
 yourself, above all. . . . No, once more I say 
 don't come back ; don't throw yourself into the 
 tiger's jaws." " Remain where you are," writes 
 the king ; " we shall meet at a future time with 
 greater pleasure. Wait for a little time." But 
 it was no longer possible for the princess to stay 
 away. " The queen needs me, and I must live 
 or die at her side," she said. In October she 
 made her will at Aix-la-Chapelle a will in 
 which even her dogs were not forgotten and 
 in November she re-entered France.
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 89 
 
 IV. 
 
 " I COMMEND the attachment of ray daughter- 
 in-law to the queen," said the old duke to his 
 valet Fortaire ; " she has made a very great 
 sacrifice in returning to her, and I fear she will 
 suffer for it." He was to see her again but 
 once. She left him in November to rejoin the 
 royal family at the Tuileries ; she returned to him 
 for a few days in the May following, but from 
 that time her life is bound and mingled with her 
 friend's. The Countess de Polignac had yielded 
 to the queen's request and fled. The Abbe de 
 Vermond was gone. The fair-weather Lauzuns 
 and Besenvals were gone long ago. But the 
 nervous, delicate princess rose to the necessity 
 with an intrepidity of affection wonderful in one 
 so frail. " I went often to visit her," says 
 Madame de la Rochejaquelein ; " I saw all her 
 anxieties, all her troubles ; there was never any 
 one more courageously devoted to the queen. 
 She had made sacrifice of her life. Just before 
 the loth of August she said to me, 'The more 
 danger increases, the stronger I feel. I am 
 quite ready to die I fear nothing.' " . . . " The 
 good Lamballe," wrote the queen to Madame
 
 9O Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 de Polignac, " seemed only to wait for danger 
 to show us all her worth." 
 
 When at the second attack upon theTuileries, 
 in June, 1792, the queen sought to follow the 
 king, whom the National Guard Aclocque had 
 persuaded to show himself to the people, it is 
 Madame de Lamballe who whispers, " Madame, 
 your place is by your children." When, again, 
 the crowd, with a smashing of doors and furni- 
 ture, surged into the council-room where a 
 handful of guards had barricaded the little group 
 with the great table, behind which the pale queen, 
 with Madame Royalc pressed to one side, and 
 the wide-eyed wondering dauphin on the other, 
 stands unmoved by scurrilous words and threat- 
 ening knives, Madame de Lamballe is closest of 
 all the " courtiers of misfortune." It is Madame 
 de Lamballe again, who, in this Pavilion de Flore 
 of the Tuileries which she gaily styles " her dun- 
 geon," charges herself with that difficult duty of 
 sifting and sorting the spirits round the royal 
 family, of retaining only the devoted followers, 
 and removing doubtful or lukewarm adherents 
 from a palace where the best qualification for 
 servitude was the willingness to die. It is 
 Madame de Lamballe, again, who passes, tear- 
 ful and terrified, on M. de la Rochefoucauld's 
 arm between the files of grenadiers conducting
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 91 
 
 the king to that insecure refuge of the Assembly. 
 She is with them through all that long day in the 
 ten-foot oven of the Logotachrgraphe, at the 
 close of which the queen, asking for a handker- 
 chief, cannot obtain one unsprinkled with blood. 
 "We shall come back," Marie Antoinette had 
 said that morning, consoling her trembling wo- 
 men. But Madame de Lamballe had no such 
 hope when she told her escort that they should 
 never see the Tuileries again. She is with them 
 in the cells of the Feutllans Convent , she ac- 
 companies them to the Prison of the Temple. 
 
 Mesdames St.. Brice, Thibaut, and Bazire, 
 ladies-in-waiting to the queen, Madame la Mar- 
 quise de Tourzel, and Pauline her daughter, 
 governesses to the royal children, and MM. Hue 
 and Chamilly, made up the little group of faith- 
 ful servants who still clung to royalty in disgrace. 
 It was the middle of August, and the heat was 
 excessive. Garments of every kind were want- 
 ing to the prisoners, not yet, indeed, acknowl- 
 edged to be such, but treated with a strange 
 mingling of insolence and consideration which 
 betokened the disordered state of those about 
 them. In the hastily-prepared apartments of 
 the Feuillans their nightly prison during their 
 detention by the Assembly the king had slept 
 with a napkin round his head for a nightcap.
 
 92 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 He now wore the coat of an officer of the Cent- 
 Suisses, while the dauphin was dressed in clothes 
 belonging to the son of the Countess of Suther- 
 land. Once in the Temple, various communi- 
 cations with the outer world became necessary, 
 in order to procure changes of dress. All sorts 
 of suspicions were aroused by this proceeding. 
 " They murmured greatly against the women 
 who had followed us," says Madame Royale. 
 An order from the Commune arrived to separate 
 the prisoners ; but the Procureur-General de la 
 Commune, Manuel, touched by the queen's 
 grief, suspended it for a time. The pretext of 
 this dangerous correspondence with outsiders 
 proved, however, too desirable to be passed 
 over, and at midnight on the iQth of August an 
 order arrived to remove from the Temple all 
 persons not belonging to the royal family. The 
 queen vainly objected that the princess was her 
 relation ; the order was carried into effect, and 
 the ladies were removed. After the separation 
 "we all four remained unable to sleep, " says 
 Madame, simply. The municipals had assured 
 them that the ladies would be sent back after 
 examination ; the next day, at seven, they were 
 informed that they had been transferred to the 
 prison of the Little Force. Only M. Hue, re- 
 turned for a sort time to the Temple.
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 93 
 
 Madame de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel, 
 and her daughter, were taken to the Commune, 
 where they were examined. At twelve they 
 were taken to the Force, and separated ; but 
 they were afterwards united by the intervention 
 of Manuel. Already the fate of the princess 
 seems to have been decided, for her name was 
 underlined in the prison register. 
 
 Meanwhile the inmates of the Temple had 
 not forgotten them. The queen herself, on 
 hearing from Manuel of their detention, had 
 busied herself to pack them up clothes and 
 necessaries. "The next morning," says Pauline 
 de Tourzel, " we received a packet from the 
 Temple ; it contained our effects, which the 
 queen had forwarded. She herself, with that 
 goodness which never failed, had taken care to 
 collect them. . . . The inconvenience of our 
 lodging, the horror of the prison, the pain of 
 separation from the king and his family, the 
 severity with which this separation seemed to 
 imply we should be treated, all these things to- 
 gether depressed me greatly, I confess, and ex- 
 tremely terrified the unfortunate princess." 
 
 We pass to the commencement of September. 
 It is not here the place to tell the story of the 
 terrible hundred hours during which the Parisian 
 mob, in an agony of rage and fear fear of the
 
 94 Pur Frenchwomen. 
 
 Prussian at Verdun, fear of the plotter in the 
 city massacred in a systematic butchery, 
 winked at or organised by the Commune, no 
 less than fourteen hundred and eighty persons 
 in the prisons of Paris. On the id of Septem- 
 ber, at breakfast time, our captives had been 
 told that ' ; passions had been fermenting in Paris 
 since the preceding evening ; that massacres were 
 apprehended, that the prisons were threatened, 
 and that several were already forced." Towards 
 midnight on the same day commenced the mas- 
 sacres at La Force. 
 
 The proceedings, it is known, were not con- 
 ducted without a certain parade, or rather parody, 
 of reason and justice. La Force, in particular, 
 had a complete " tribunal of the people " sitting 
 in the room of the concierge, and having a presi- 
 dent (changed frequently during the four days' 
 sitting), six or seven judges (for the most part 
 emissaries of the Commune), and a public 
 accuser. Before these the prisoner appeared, 
 was hurriedly examined, and speedily judged. 
 If accounted guilty the sentence ran, " Let the 
 accused be discharged," or, with a curious irony, 
 he was dismissed d VAbbaye, or <J Coblent^, and 
 uncertain of his fate, was pushed through the 
 wicket, and behind the wicket were the butchers. 
 If, on the other hand, he was absolved a rare 1
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 9$ 
 
 exception the formula was, " Let him be dis- 
 charged, with Vive la nation;" he was dragged 
 upon a pile of corpses, " the worthy altar of 
 Fraternity," and obliged, amidst shouts and 
 cheers, to swear the civic oath. 
 
 Pauline de Tourzel had been separated from 
 her mother some hours before, and saved. The 
 other two prisoners remained in a terrible sus- 
 pense, awaiting the death of which there seemed 
 but little doubt. They were fetched at last, and 
 taken down into a little court filled by a number 
 of fierce-looking men, the greater number of 
 whom were drunk. Madame de Tourzel was 
 called to the assistance of a fainting lady, and 
 afterwards led to the tribunal. She was exam- 
 ined for a few minutes, then hurried through the 
 wicket, just catching sight of the pile of corpses 
 which choked the little street, and upon which 
 stood two men with dripping sabres, and 
 smuggled away to rejoin her daughter. In the 
 meantime, Madame de Lamballe had been trans- 
 ferred to the adjoining prison of the Greater 
 Force. 
 
 It is not easy to decide whether this step was 
 taken in the hope of saving her, or whether It 
 was intended to secure her thus more surely to 
 the vengeance of her assassins. Mesdames de 
 Tourz?! were certainly preserved by, emissaries
 
 96 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 from the Commune. Was the princess included 
 in the same intention ? The Duke of Penthievre, 
 we know, was making every effort. Looking 
 to the result, we are forced to believe that 
 her death had been decided. We pass, how- 
 ever, from surmises to history, and take up her 
 story as told by the royalist journalist, Peltier. 
 "This unfortunate princess," says he, " having 
 been spared [r] on the night of the 2d, had 
 thrown herself upon her bed. a prey to all kinds 
 of horrors and anxieties. She closed her eyes 
 only to open them almost immediately, starting 
 from sleep at some dreadful dream. About 
 eight o'clock in the morning two national guards 
 entered her room, to announce to her that she 
 was about to be transferred to the Abbaye. To 
 this she replied that, prison for prison, she would 
 as soon remain where she was as remove to 
 another, and consequently refused to come 
 down, begging them very earnestly to let 
 her be. 
 
 " One of the guards thereupon approached, 
 and said to her harshly that she must obey, for 
 her life depended upon it. She replied that she 
 would do what they desired, and begging those 
 in her room to retire, put on a gown, recalled 
 the national guard, who gave her his arm, and 
 went down to the formidable wicket, where she
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 97 
 
 found, invested with their scarves, the two muni- 
 cipal officers who were then occupied in judging 
 the prisoners." . . . They were Hubert and 
 THuillier. Arrived before this implacable tri- 
 bunal, the sight of the dripping weapons of 
 the butchers, whose hands, faces, and clothes 
 were stained with blood the shrieks of the 
 wretches who were being murdered in the 
 street, so overcame her that she fainted repeat- 
 edly. No sooner was she revived by the care 
 of her waiting-woman than she lost conscious- 
 ness again. When at last she was in a state to 
 be questioned, they made semblance of com- 
 mencing the interrogatory. This, in few words, 
 was her examination, as gathered by the family 
 of the princess from the report of an ocular 
 witness : 
 
 " Who are you ?" 
 
 " Marie-Louise, Princess of Savoy." 
 
 " Your capacity ? " 
 
 " Superintendent of the Queen's Household/' 
 
 " Had you knowledge of the plots of the court 
 on the tenth of August ? " 
 
 " I do not know if there were any plots on 
 the tenth of August, but I know that I had no 
 knowledge of them." 
 
 " Swear liberty, equality, hatred of the King, 
 of the Queen, and of royalty." 
 
 H
 
 98 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 " I will willingly swear the first two ; I can- 
 not swear the last : it is not in my heart." (Here 
 an assistant whispered, " Swear, then : if you 
 don't swear, you are lost.") The princess did 
 not answer, lifted her hands to her face, and 
 made a step towards the wicket. The judge 
 then said, " Let madame be discharged " (Qu on 
 dlargisse madame). The phrase, as we know, 
 was the signal of death. A report has been cir- 
 culated that it was not the intention of the judge 
 to send her to execution, but those who wished 
 by this to extenuate the horror of her death 
 have forgotten what precautions were taken to 
 save her. Some say that when the wicket was 
 opened she had been recommended to cry " Vive 
 la nation ! " but that, terrified at the sight of 
 the blood and corpses that met her eye, she 
 could only answer " Fi V horreur ! " and that 
 the assassins, applying the very natural excla- 
 mation to the cry they demanded of her, had 
 struck her down there and then. Others affirm 
 that at the door of the wicket she only uttered 
 the words " Je suis perdue." 
 
 But, however this may be, she had no sooner 
 crossed the threshold than she was struck. " Just 
 at this moment," Continues another narrator, who 
 adds some slight details to the foregoing account 
 of Peltier, which, nevertheless, seems to have
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 99 
 
 served him as a basis ''just at this moment 
 one of the ruffians around her attempted to lift 
 her headdress with his sabre, but as he lurched, 
 drunk, and half-dazed with blood, the point cut 
 her over the eye. The blood gushed out, and 
 her long hair fell upon her shoulders. Two men 
 held her up tightly below the armpits, and 
 obliged her to walk upon the bodies. ... A 
 few cries of ' Grace ! Grdce ! ' were raised by a 
 handful of the spectators posted in the street, 
 but one of the butchers, crying ' death to the 
 disguised lacqueys of the Duke of Penthievre ! ' 
 fell upon them with his sabre. Two were killed 
 outright, the rest found safety in flight. Almost 
 at the same instant another of the wretches, with 
 the blow of a club, struck down the princess 
 senseless between the men who held her up 
 upon the heap of corpses at his feet." Her 
 head was then cut off, and the headsman, 
 " accompanied by some of his fellows, carried 
 it to the counter of a neighbouring marchand de 
 j>m, whom they tried to force into drinking 
 1/5 health. The man refusing was maltreated, 
 dragged upon a heap of bodies, and com- 
 pelled, with the knife at his throat, to cry 
 4 Vive la natidn ! ' When he returned home 
 his shop was empty ; the mob had carried off 
 everything 
 
 II 2
 
 ioo Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 We have neither intention nor inclination to 
 detail the further atrocities to which the body 
 was subjected. It is sufficient to say that 
 towards mid-day the mob resolved to carry the 
 head in triumph. Having forced a hairdresser 
 to comb, curl, and powder it, in order that the 
 Autrichicnne might recognise the face, they lifted 
 it upon a pike, formed into a procession with 
 drums and fifes, headed by a boy and an old man 
 dancing like maniacs, and accompanied by a 
 gathering crowd of men, women, and children 
 ragged, blood-stained, and drunken shrieking 
 at intervals "Lamballe! Lamballe ! " and pil- 
 laging the wine-shops as they went, they bore 
 their trophy through the streets of Paris Paris 
 that looked on, inactive and in stupor, during 
 the whole of these four days of infamy and 
 carnage. 
 
 History and romance are strangely mingled in 
 the story of this horrible procession. It seems 
 clear, however, that they carried the head first to 
 the Abbey St. Antoine, the abbess of which, 
 Madame de Beauvau, had been a friend of 
 Madame de Lamballe. They then and this 
 is certain took it to the Temple to exhibit it 
 to Marie Antoinette. The sight though not 
 the knowledge was spared the queen by those 
 about her ; but the king's valet, Clery, saw it
 
 The Princess de Lamballe. 101 
 
 ' bloody, but not disfigured, with the fair hair 
 curling yet, and floating round the pike-shaft," 
 as it tossed to and fro above the cruel faces and 
 upturned eyeballs of the crowd who filled the 
 trampled Temple garden, and yelled for Madame 
 Veto. It is certain, too, that it was borne as a 
 grim homage to Philip Egalitt, who was just 
 sitting down to dinner in the Palais Royal, 
 where shameless Madame de Buffon fell back- 
 ward, shrieking from her chair, her face covered 
 with her hands, " Ah, mon Dieu ! ma tele se 
 promenera un jour de cette maniere ! " Where 
 else and with what other incidents until at last 
 it was conveyed away by the emissaries of the 
 Duke de Penthievre to the Cemetery of the 
 Foundlings, cannot further with any accuracy 
 be related. Of the life of Madame de Lamballe 
 our readers know all that we can tell them, and 
 we have added nothing to the horror of her 
 death. 
 
 Not a grand death, we hasten to add, by any 
 means. Not dramatic, for example, in a white 
 dress parsemee de bouquets de couleur rose, with 
 longings for pen and ink to chronicle her feelings. 
 Not an august progress through a rancorous 
 mob, in a scarlet shirt, like " Vengeance sanc- 
 tified." She has left us no political apologia, 
 no address to the French people, with a ring of
 
 102 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 " Quousque tandem" in it by which we are to 
 remember her ; no eloquent appeal to an im- 
 partial posterity by which we are to judge her. 
 Yet judge her harshly we shall not remember 
 her we shall most certainly as one who was 
 " aussi bonne que jolie ;" as " the good Lamballe, 
 who only needed danger to show us all her 
 worth ; " as a genuine woman and ill-fated lady, 
 who was as lovable as Virgilia, as pure as 
 Imogen, and as gentle as Desdemona. " She 
 was beautiful, she was good, she had known no 
 happiness/' says Carlyle. Shall we not pity her ? 
 Pious where piety was useless, except as the 
 cloak to hide an interest ; chaste in a court of 
 roue's and panders, where chastity was a " pre- 
 judice ; " a tender wife, a loving daughter, and 
 a loyal friend, shall we not here lay down 
 upon the grave of Marie de Lamballe our rever- 
 ential tribute, our little chaplet of immortelles, in 
 the name of all good women, wives, and 
 daughters ? 
 
 " Elle Mail mieux femme que les autres." To 
 us that apparently indefinite, exquisitely definite 
 sentence most fitly marks the distinction between 
 the "subjects of the two proceeding papers and 
 the subject [of the present. It is a transition 
 from the stately sitting figure of a marble Agrip-
 
 The Princess de Lainballe. 103 
 
 pina to the breathing, feeling woman at your 
 side ; it is the transition from the statuesque, 
 Rachelesque heroines of a David to the " small 
 sweet idyl" of a Greuze. And, we confess it, 
 we were not wholly at 'ease with those tragic, 
 majestic figures. We shuddered at the dagger 
 and the bowl which suited them so well. We 
 marvelled at their bloodless serenity, their super- 
 human self-sufficiency ; inly we questioned if 
 they breathed and felt. Or was their circula- 
 tion' a matter of machinery a mere dead-beat 
 escapement ? We longed for the sexe pro- 
 nonci of Rivarol we longed for the show- 
 man's " female woman." We respected and we 
 studied, but we could not love them. 
 
 With Madame de Lamballe the case is other- 
 wise. Not grand like this one, not heroic like 
 that one, ellc cst mieux femmc que ces autres. 
 She, at least, is woman after a fairer fashion 
 after a truer type. Not intellectually strong like 
 Manon Phlipon, not Spartan-souled like Marie 
 de Corday, she has still a rare intelligence, a 
 courage of affection. She has that clairvoyance 
 of the heart which supersedes all the stimulants 
 of mottoes from Raynal, or maxims from Rous- 
 seau ; she has that " angel instinct " which is a 
 juster lawgiver than Justinian. It was thought 
 praise to say of the Girondist lady that she was a.
 
 IO4 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 greater man than her husband ; it is praise to sr.y 
 of this queen's friend that she was more woman 
 than Madame Roland. Not so grand, not so 
 great, we like the princess best. Ellc est mieux 
 femme que ces autres.
 
 MADAME DE GENLIS. 
 1746-1830.
 
 *' A learned lady, famed 
 
 For every branch of every science known 
 
 In every Christian language ever named, 
 With virtues equall'd by her wit alone : 
 
 She made the cleverest people quite ashamed, 
 And even the good with inward envy groan, 
 Finding themselves so very much exceeded 
 In their own way by all the things that she did." 
 
 Don Juan, canto i. s. ic. 
 
 ' Uneftmme auteni le plus gracienx et /<. fins 
 
 galant des pedagogues ." 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVr.
 
 MADAME DE GENLIS. 
 I. 
 
 '"PHE portrait of Mademoiselle Stephanie- 
 - Felicite-Ducrest de Saint-Aubin, otherwise 
 Madame de Sillery-Genlis, which is inserted 
 in Sainte-Beuve's Galerie des Femmes Cdttbres, 
 does not, at first sight, appear to support the 
 quotations chosen for this paper. Indeed re- 
 membering her only as the respectable precep- 
 tress who had prepared a King of France for 
 the hardships and privations of a coming throne 
 by perfecting him in the difficult accomplishments 
 of sleeping comfortably upon a plank, and walk- 
 ing leagues with leaden soles to his boots we 
 confess to having been somewhat startled by her 
 personal advantages. This could never be the 
 epicene genius whom Rivarol had twitted the 
 omniscient matron who had reserved for her old 
 age the task of re-writing the Encyclopedic. 
 O Dea certs ! we had said, but then it was 
 not Venus that we thought of. Surely a 
 stately presence, surely a personality preter- 
 naturally imposing, Minerva-like, august say
 
 io8 Four frenchwomen. 
 
 like Madame Dacier, whom we passed in seek- 
 ing. Not at all ! A sham berg&re simply, from 
 some Tile Adam or Chantilly file some 
 batelilre de Vile d? Amour. A sidelong, self-con- 
 scious, wide-eyed head, with a ribbon woven in 
 the well-dressed hair with the complexion of 
 a miniature and the simper of Dresden china. 
 The figure " languishes " with a cultivated aban- 
 don. One hand trifles elegantly with a ringlet, 
 the other falls with a graceful droop across her 
 harp-strings. " Je sitis cxcessivement jolie" she 
 seemed to say with a little confirmatory vibra- 
 tion of a chord. If this is Eroxene or Melicerte, 
 she manages to wear her fichu with a " wild 
 civility 1 ' that Myrtillo must find delightfully un- 
 puritanic and enticing. If this is the simple shep- 
 herd beauty, then heads must ferment as freely 
 in Arcadia as in Palais Royal salons, for the 
 modelled features have been excellently tutored, 
 and the educated smile is most artistically con- 
 ceived. But there is a book by her side, behind 
 by the leafy trellis rises an easel, and this is 
 Madame la Comtesse de Genlis the accom- 
 plished author, the governor of Louis Philippe, 
 and the counsellor of Bonaparte, very amiably 
 self-satisfied, very characteristically posed, and 
 "our mind's eye " is altogether in the wrong. 
 We send off for her Memoirs, and study them
 
 Madame de Genlis. 109 
 
 attentively. What has been discovered, with her 
 assistance will be presently disclosed, but just for 
 a few lines it is needful to digress concerning 
 Madame de Genlis in her capacity of writer. 
 
 For she was a writer above all, this simpering, 
 self-contented shepherdess whom we had mis- 
 judged so sadly. " She would have invented 
 the inkstand," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "if the 
 inkstand had been uninvented." Not only did 
 she scribble incessantly, but on themes most 
 discordant and opposite. " Madame de Genlis," 
 says a contemporary, " has written enormously. 
 She has essayed almost every style, from the 
 fugitive piece to the bulky alphabetical compil- 
 ation, from the roman-poeme to the treatise on 
 domestic economy and the collection of receipts 
 for the kitchen. She has discoursed for the edu- 
 cation of princes and of lacqueys ; she has pre- 
 pared maxims for the throne and precepts for 
 the pantry. And if we add to the variety of her 
 productions the not less extraordinary diversity 
 of her talents, and the marvels of her industry 
 ranging from wicker-work baskets to wigs a 
 la brigaditre we must certainly concede to 
 Madame la Comtesse the gift of universality." 
 At this distance of time, very little more than 
 the reputation of universality remains. To use 
 a homely figure, Madame la Comtesse was
 
 no Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 "Jack of all trades and master of none" a 
 living exposition of the proverb, " Qui dit ama- 
 teur, dil ignorant.'" With infinite curiosity, 
 industry, and energy, and a vanity of science 
 fed and fostered by her singular confidence in 
 her own abilities, she frittered away her talents 
 the undoubted talents she undoubtedly had 
 in numberless works of which barely the list 
 survives in the columns of a bibliographical dic- 
 tionary. She beat out her fine gold into the 
 flattest and flimsiest of leaf, and the leaves bound 
 together form some eighty or ninety volumes. 
 Once and again, perhaps, a novel bearing her 
 name crops up in some new venture of French 
 classics, yet it is but rarely, now-a-days, that 
 one meets with any of the numerous literary 
 offspring of the prolific genius who had lived as 
 many years and written as many volumes as her 
 great adversary, Voltaire. 
 
 They need not detain us long, those " many 
 volumes/' Full is written everywhere upon 
 that forgotten fame. The dust lies over it as 
 deep as on the Cldie of her childhood from 
 which she first drew inspiration. Few seekers 
 part the leaves in that Arcadia Deserta ; its 
 arbours are uninhabitable, and its ornaments out 
 of date. Erminias and Darmanccs sigh after a 
 sterner fashion in modern novels : no Mayfair
 
 Madame de Genlis. Ill 
 
 lover drinks down the dried-up bouquet from his 
 fair one's bosom " instead of tea/' An enter* 
 prising herborist, perchance, might collect from 
 its barren abundance a hortus-siccus of faded sen- 
 timents ; a literary Livingstone, maybe, might 
 pry amongst its mazes for Scuderi's Fleuve 
 du Tendre, but for the ordinary latter-day reader 
 its hour has struck. Only a few semi-educa- 
 tional works Adele et Thdodore, Le Tht&lre 
 de V Education, Les Veilldes du Chateau, Les 
 Lemons d'une Gouvernante ; two or three histori- 
 cal romances Mademoiselle de Lafayette, 
 Madame de Maintenon, La Duchesse de la Val- 
 liere ; and a short novelette Mademoiselle de 
 Clermont, which is held to be her masterpiece, 
 have been singled out by the indulgence of 
 modern criticism. To these for the present 
 purpose we venture to add the eight volumes of 
 Memoirs, and the delightful little collection of 
 anecdotes and recollections entitled Souvenirs de 
 F elide. -\ 
 
 The Souvenirs de Fdlicie appeared at a fortu- 
 nate moment. In 1804 France had passed 
 through the Revolution, the Terror, and the Di- 
 rectory, and was nearing the Empire. The Par- 
 isians of 1804 were leagues away from the 
 old gallant and gay noblesse that danced, and 
 drank, and acted so light-heartedly through that
 
 H2 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 " Neapolitan festival " of theirs. Their soldier- 
 successors were not unwilling to hear of them 
 again. Madame la Comtesse had been with 
 them and of them, and these extracts from her 
 journals, sprightly and readable, had a merited 
 success. The volume even now is excessively 
 amusing, and its semi-anonymous character pre- 
 serves it somewhat from the tiresome and intru- 
 sive egotism that disfigures the Memoirs. 
 
 It was twenty years after that she published 
 the Memoirs, when she was growing a rather 
 slatternly old lady of fourscore. In these eight 
 volumes she discourses in easy stages, reproduc- 
 ing and diluting her recollections. Their worst 
 fault is their bulk ; their garrulity one can almost 
 pardon, for it helps us to the character of the 
 writer. She is herself the matter of her booh, 
 to use the expression of Montaigne. She seems 
 to have said, in the witty words of the younger 
 Pliny, " I have no time to write a short letter, 
 so I must e'en write along one." Nevertheless, 
 her gossipings reward perusal. They constitute 
 a great magazine of pre-revolutionary anecdote 
 they abound in curious details of the manners 
 and pastimes of the day they are full of clever 
 appreciations (which have been called dtprfaia- 
 tions, and are none the worse) of those trained 
 talkers and brilliant beauties of the salons who
 
 Madame de Genii's. 113 
 
 had the Eneydoptdistes for teachers and the 
 Marechale de Luxembourg for oracle of tone 
 the " good company," the " grand society " of 
 ancient France which " Europe came to copy, 
 and vainly strove to imitate." 
 
 As she describes it, " Assume a virtue if you 
 have it not," appears to have been its motto. 
 Neither a stainless life nor a superior merit wa: 
 indispensable to its elect. This sect, of supreme 
 authority in all matters of etiquette, morality, 
 and taste, admitted into its charmed circle both 
 sheep and goat alike, provided they possessed 
 certain superficial elegance of manner a cer- 
 tain distinctive hall-mark of rank or riches, court- 
 credit or capacity. Its members had carried 
 the art of savoir-vivre to an excellence unprece- 
 dented save in their own country. Good taste 
 had taught them to imitate the graces out of pure 
 amenity to observe restrictions, if only for the 
 sake of convenience. To counterfeit gentleness, 
 decency, reserve, modesty, toleration, and amia- 
 bility the outward and visible signs of good 
 manners seemed to be the surest method of 
 attaining their end, which was at once to de- 
 light and to enthrall. They had combined all 
 the fashions of pleasing and of interesting with a 
 marvellous adroitness. Discussion in their con- 
 versation rarely or never degenerated into dis- 
 s T
 
 H4 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 pute ; they had banished scandal from their 
 meetings as jarring with the suavity of manner 
 which every one affected. Their politeness had 
 all the urbanity and ease of a habit acquired in 
 childhood, and fostered by nicety of character. 
 They had learned to protect without patronising ; 
 to listen with a flattering attention ; to praise 
 without being either fulsome or insipid ; to wel- 
 come a compliment without either receiving or 
 rejecting it ; and they had thus created a com- 
 munity which was quoted all over Europe as the 
 most perfect model of refinement, of elegance, 
 and of nobility. Admit that its charm was only 
 veneer veneer that shammed solidity yet 
 was it a veneer so rare and smooth, so sweetly 
 aromatic and so delicate in grain, susceptible of 
 so brilliant and so dazzling a polish, that easy- 
 going people might well be pardoned if they 
 mistook it for nay, very possibly preferred it 
 to the less attractive excellences of the genu- 
 ine rosewood or walnut. 
 
 But we linger too long. It must be our ex- 
 cuse that it is chiefly from this social point of 
 view as records of bygone manners that we 
 have considered Madame de Genlis's Memoirs. 
 Taking upon ourselves little more than the 
 modest office of Chorus, we propose to accom- 
 pany her through these her chronicles. We
 
 Madame de Genlis. 115 
 
 shall ask no pardon if we digress. Madame la 
 Comtesse loses her own way so often that it is 
 difficult not to stray in following her footsteps. 
 
 II. 
 
 IT was in January, 1746 or, to be histori- 
 cally precise, on the 2)th of January, 1746 
 that Madame de Genlis " gave herself the trouble 
 to be born." The phrase is used advisedly, for 
 she undoubtedly belonged to that happy class 
 who, as Beaumarchais alleged, had only to go 
 through this trifling and unimportant preliminary 
 in order to insure the success of their future 
 lives. In common with most of the great 
 geniuses of her age, as Voltaire, Rousseau, 
 Newton and we marvel that her complacent 
 vanity has omitted to point the comparison 
 she came into the world so small and sickly that 
 she was obliged to be pinned up in a pillow for 
 warmth. In this condition, M. le Bailli, coming 
 to make his compliments to her parents, and 
 being short of sight, all but sat down upon the 
 very chair in which the future governor of kings 
 and counsellor of emperors had been placed for 
 safety. 
 
 Her father, M. de St. Aubin, was a gentle- 
 
 i 2
 
 u6 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 man of Burgundy. He held a little estate at 
 Champceri, near Autun ; but when his daughter 
 was about six years old he purchased the marqui- 
 sate of St. Aubin, and removed to the tumble- 
 down chateau of that name which lay on the 
 banks of the Loire, and was so skilfully designed 
 that the river could not be perceived from any 
 of its windows. Her mother, a Mademoiselle 
 de Mezieres, seems to have troubled herself 
 very little being greatly preoccupied with the 
 exigencies of an idle life about her daughter's 
 education. Her father, she says, confined him- 
 self to overcoming her antipathy to insects, 
 " particularly spiders and frogs." (!) Until she 
 came to St. Aubin she seems to have been left 
 almost entirely to the femmes-de-chambre, of 
 whom there were four (a fact which seems to 
 imply that M. de St. Aubin's income of $oo/. a 
 year must have been infinitely more elastic than 
 at present), who instructed her in the Catechism, 
 and in addition filled her head with romances 
 and fanciful stories. At St. Aubin she was for 
 a time consigned to the village schoolmistress, 
 who taught her to read. "As I had a very 
 good memory, I learned rapidly, and at the end 
 of six or seven months I read fluently." She 
 then had a governess from Brittany, Mademoi- 
 selle de Mars, under whose auspices she con-
 
 Madame de Genlis. n'y 
 
 tinued the study of the Catechism, a little history, 
 a little music, a great deal of Mademoiselle de 
 Scuderi's Cltflie, and the now forgotten tragedies 
 of Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Barbier. Writing 
 she taught herself afterwards, at the age of 
 eleven. 
 
 Even at this time she displayed the ruling 
 passions of her life for scribbling and teaching. 
 At eight, she says, long before she could write, 
 she was already dictating little romances and 
 comedies to Mademoiselle de Mars ; and we 
 find her clandestinely keeping a school of little 
 urchins who came to cut rushes under the ter- 
 race before her bedroom, on those days when 
 her governess was occupied with her home 
 correspondence : 
 
 " I soon took it into my head to give them 
 lessons that is to say, to teach them what I 
 knew myself the Catechism, a verse or two 
 of Mademoiselle Barbier's tragedies, and what I 
 had learned by heart of the elements of music. 
 Leaning upon the wall of the terrace, I gave 
 them these fine lessons in the gravest way in the 
 world. I had a great deal of trouble in making 
 them speak the verses, on account of their Bur- 
 gundian patois; but I was patient, and they were 
 docile. My little pupils, ranged along the wall 
 among the reeds and rushes, nose in air in order
 
 n8 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 to see me, listened with the greatest attention, 
 for I promised them rewards, and in fact threw 
 them down fruit, little cakes, and all kinds of 
 trifles. ... At last Mademoiselle de Mars sur- 
 prised me one day in the midst of my academy. 
 She did not scold me. but she laughed so heartily 
 at the way in which my pupils repeated the 
 poetry, that she entirely put me out of conceit 
 with my learned functions." 
 
 At this time she was called the Countess de 
 Lancy. A year before, her mother had carried 
 her to Paris, where, according to the prevailing 
 code of fashion, she had been tortured by den- 
 tists, squeezed by staymakers in the orthodox 
 strait-waistcoats, pinched in tight shoes, com- 
 pelled to wear goggles for squinting, and deco- 
 rated with an iron collar to correct her country 
 attitudes. Moreover, she learned to wear a 
 hoop ; a master was hired to teach her to walk, 
 and she was forbidden to run, to jump, and to ask 
 questions. For the child of 1750 only differed 
 from her mother in this that she was seen 
 through the wrong end of the opera-glass. Sub- 
 sequently our heroine had been taken to Lyons 
 for the purpose of procuring her reception as a 
 canoness in the neighbouring chapter of Alix 
 a kind of honorary novitiate very much d. la 
 mode among the nobility, which left to the
 
 Madame de Gen Us. 119 
 
 novice the option of later taking the vows ; but, 
 in any case, gave her the advantage of certain 
 privileges and decorations. She thus describes 
 her reception in the church of the chapter : 
 
 " All the sisters dressed in the fashion of 
 the day, but wearing black silk gowns over 
 hoops, and large cloaks lined with ermine 
 were in the choir. A priest, styled the grand 
 prior, examined us " [her cousin was admitted 
 at the same time], " made us repeat the Credo, 
 and afterwards kneel down on velvet cushions. 
 It was then his duty to cut off a little lock of 
 hair ; but as he was very old and almost blind, 
 he gave me a little snip, which I bore heroically 
 without a murmur, until it was at last found out 
 by the bleeding of my ear. This done, he put 
 on my finger a consecrated gold ring, and fas- 
 tened on my head a little piece of black-and- 
 white stuff, about three inches long, which the 
 canonesses termed a husband " [un mari\. " He 
 then invested me with the insignia of the order, 
 a red ribbon with a beautiful enamelled cross, 
 and a broad black watered sash. This cere- 
 mony finished, he addressed us briefly, after 
 which we saluted all the canonesses, and then 
 heard high mass. From this moment I was 
 called Madame la Comtesse de Lancy" [a rank 
 to which the canonesses of Alix were entitled].
 
 120 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 " My father was lord of Bourbon-Lane/" [a 
 town some two leagues from St. Aubin], " and 
 for this reason the name was given to me. The 
 pleasure of hearing myself called madame afforded 
 me more delight than all the rest." 
 
 The most important business of her childhood 
 seems to have been one in which she always ap- 
 pears, wittingly and unwittingly, to have greatly 
 excelled, namely, acting. We need scarcely say 
 that France, during the latter half of the cen- 
 tury especially, went mad for private theatricals. 
 All the world the great world, of course, and 
 not the mere hemisphere was most emphati- 
 cally a stage. No country house but had its 
 company of comedians, no farmer-general but 
 had his carpenters and scene-painters. There 
 were countesses who rivalled Clairon, and 
 princes who rivalled Preville. There were 
 theatres everywhere at Chantilly, at Villers- 
 Cotterets, at 1'Ile Adam, at Little Trianon 
 nay, for so does the fashion fix its stamp upon 
 the age, even in that far tropical Arcadia of 
 theirs we shall find Paul and Virginia acting 
 Boaz and Ruth, to the sound of a tom-tom, 
 among the palms and ebony-trees of the Mau- 
 ritius. "To play comedy well," says M. Bar- 
 riere in his Preface to the Souvenirs de Fdlicie, 
 "became the all-important business the na-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 121 
 
 lional movement, as it were, of this singular 
 epoch. It seemed as if France, involved under 
 Louis XV. in her finances, disgraced in her po- 
 litical relations, and (hardest to believe ! ) fallen 
 from her military reputation, no longer attached 
 value, interest, or glory except to theatrical suc- 
 cesses. The taste for acting had absorbed all 
 classes, levelled all distinctions, connected and 
 confounded all ranks of society." 
 
 At the present moment, however, it is with a 
 certain Burgundian company that we are more 
 particularly concerned. In 17^, M. de St. 
 Aubin, growing tired of the country, had gone 
 to Paris for six months (these separations of 
 husband and wife being quite en regie, if not de 
 rigueur), and her mother, the better to employ 
 the tedious hours of alienation, began at the 
 end of two months to prepare a fete for his 
 return. But place aux dames Madame la 
 Comtesse de Lancy shall speak for herself : 
 
 " She" [her mother] " composed a kind of 
 comic opera in the pastoral style, with a mytho- 
 logical prologue in which I played Cupid. All 
 her lady's-maids and she had four, all young 
 and pretty took part in it. Besides this a 
 tragedy was attempted, and they chose Iphigenie 
 en Aulide " [Racine] ; "my mother took Clytem- 
 nestra, and the part of Iphigenia was given to
 
 122 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 me. A medical man of Bourbon-Lancy, named 
 Pinot, played Agamemnon, and his eldest son, 
 a youth of eighteen, had a prodigious success 
 in the character of the impetuous Achilles. . . . 
 My mother, in order to provide the requisite 
 costumes, cut up her dresses in the most ruthless 
 manner. I shall never forget that my Cupid's 
 dress in the prologue was pink, covered with 
 point-lace sprinkled all over with little artificial 
 flowers of different colours ; it reached down to 
 my knees. I had little boots of straw colour and 
 silver, my long hair fell upon my shoulders, and 
 I had blue wings. My Iphigenia's dress, over a 
 large hoop " [Iphigenia in a large hoop ! ] " was 
 of lampas ' [a kind of brocaded silk], " cherry 
 colour and silver, and trimmed with sable." 
 
 En v&ritt Mademoiselle must have been ravls- 
 sante, and we should have been the first to tell 
 her so, certain that our remarks would have 
 been properly appreciated. Let us add that she 
 completely vanquished the impetuous Achilles, 
 who made her a proposal in form after one of 
 the rehearsals. She was then eleven, but she 
 thoroughly appreciated the obligation she had 
 conferred upon society at that important act of 
 her nativity. " That a doctor's son, a man who 
 was not a gentleman, should have had the au- 
 dacity to speak of love to Madame la Com-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 123 
 
 tesse ! " Atrocious ! " The young man was " 
 we rejoice to record it "reprimanded by 
 his father as he deserved to be." 
 
 Meanwhile the rehearsals went on briskly, 
 and the company grew more and more used to 
 the boards. At the end of three months they 
 were playing Voltaire's Zaire, in which Ma- 
 dame de Lancy took the part of the heroine ; 
 then the Folics Amoureuscs of Regnard, in 
 which she played Agatha. The so-called re- 
 hearsals were, in fact, performances, as numbers 
 of spectators came from Bourbon-Lancy and 
 Moulins, and " these eternal ftes" she re- 
 marks, " must have cost a good deal of 
 money." 
 
 Here is a comical incident at one of them : 
 " There was a part of the prologue that I 
 liked immensely, and certainly the idea was a 
 novel one. As I have said, I played Cupid, 
 and a little boy from the village represented 
 Pleasure. I had to sing some verses which 
 were supposed to be addressed to my father, 
 and which ended with these words : 
 
 ' An Plaisir farrache les aihs 
 Pour le mieux fixer pres de vans' 
 
 and as I concluded I had to seize the little 
 Pleasure and pluck away his wings. But it 
 happened one day at a grand dress-rehearsal,
 
 124 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 that the wings, being too firmly fixed, resisted 
 all my efforts. Vainly I shook Pleasure : his 
 wings had grown to his shoulders. I became 
 excited and threw him down, crying piteously ; 
 I never let him go, all tumbled though he was, 
 and finally, to my lasting honour, tore away the 
 wings of the now disconsolate Pleasure, who 
 roared with vexation." 
 
 Her Cupid's costume was considered to be so 
 becoming that she wore nothing else, and took 
 her walks abroad with all the paraphernalia, 
 quiver at back and bow in hand. All her 
 dresses were made to pattern. She had a week- 
 day Cupid's dress and a Sunday Cupid's dress. 
 The only difference was that the celestial at- 
 tributes were removed, and the costume slightly 
 monasticised by a covering cloak, when she 
 went to church. " Friendship," says the pretty 
 French proverb which Byron has made the bur- 
 den of a song, " is Love without his wings." 
 So the little Countess de Lancy went week- 
 days en Amour and Sundays en Amitie". If we 
 might be permitted to push the fancy further, 
 we should say that this was very much her po- 
 sition throughout life. The world certainly had 
 her love and the best of her time, but we ques- 
 tion very much whether her vaunted attachment 
 to the Church was anything more than a deco-
 
 Madame de Genii s. 125 
 
 rous acquaintanceship, or species of unwinged 
 affection. 
 
 She kept her Cupid's dress and name for some 
 nine months. M. de St. Aubin, possibly pre- 
 ferring the attractions of Paris to the country 
 theatricals which awaited him, had been a year 
 and a-half away, and still the files are continued. 
 Her mother, wishing to add dancing to music 
 and tragedy, invited a danseuse from Autun, 
 who taught her to dance a minuet and an enlrde. 
 But Mademoiselle Mion's saltatory exertions 
 required so much succour from stimulants that 
 she was discharged, and succeeded by a pro- 
 fessor of fifty, who was a fencing-master as 
 well. To the entree he added a saraband, and 
 finally taught her to fence, which greatly de- 
 lighted her. She succeeded so well that her 
 mother decided to let her play Darviane in the 
 Mdlanide of La Chaussee, a part in which she 
 had to draw sword and defend herself. After 
 this she wore a " charming male costume " until 
 she left Burgundy, a circumstance which, never- 
 theless, did not prevent her from habitually 
 assisting at the procession of the Fte Dieu 
 attired as an angel. 
 
 No one, she says, confessor included, was 
 ever to her knowledge at least at all scan- 
 dalised by this extraordinary equipment and
 
 126 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 education. " However, I gained in this way 
 that my feet were better turned, and I walked 
 far better than most women, while I was cer- 
 tainly more active than any I have known. I 
 led a charming life : in the morning I played a 
 little on the harpsichord and sang ; then I learnt 
 my parts, and then I took my dancing lesson and 
 fenced ; after this I read until dinner-time with 
 Mademoiselle de Mars." 
 
 III. 
 
 BY this time the dilapidated Chateau St. Au- 
 bin threatened to fall about their ears, and the 
 mother and daughter removed to Bourbon- 
 Lancy, where M. de St. Aubin.at length joined 
 them in 1757, when the files were of course 
 continued. It is now his turn to be left be- 
 hind, and the mother and daughter spend a con- 
 siderable time at Paris with Madame de St. 
 Aubin's sister, Madame de Belleveau. Then 
 M. de St. Aubin, who, in all probability, had 
 been burning the other end of the candle in the 
 capital, is discovered to be ruined a circum- 
 stance which reduces their income to about fifty 
 pounds a year, and causes a quarrel between the 
 sisters. Mademoiselle de Mars is naturally dis-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 127 
 
 pensedwith. M. de St. Aubin, after some little 
 stay in Burgundy, goes to St. Domingo to re- 
 trieve his fortune, and his wife and daughter 
 find a temporary asylum at Passy in the house 
 of a fashionable Maecenas and farmer-general, 
 M. de la Popeliniere. 
 
 Here our heroine's theatrical and musical at- 
 tainments obtained her no small credit. She 
 took soubrelles' and ingenues' parts in the pieces 
 of M. de la Popeliniere, and in one of these 
 danced a dance which, she complacently re- 
 marks, had the greatest success. Here, too, 
 she began to acquire, under Gaiflfre, otherwise 
 " King David," that art of harp-playing in which 
 she afterwards excelled. Our host was enchanted 
 with our little talents, and would frequently ex- 
 claim with a sigh, " What a pity it is that she is 
 only thirteen! " which was fully understood and 
 appreciated. And, indeed, if we had been a 
 little older he should not have sighed in vain, 
 although he was over sixty-five. Every con- 
 sideration should fall before our respect for 
 age. In any other case we can be firm, as for 
 example when we reject a M. de Monville 
 who, by our own showing, had every good qual- 
 ity, except quality upon very much the same 
 grounds as the impetuous Achilles. She has 
 chronicled one of her habits while at Passy, to
 
 128 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 which, doubtless, she owed much of that easy 
 fluency which no one has ever attempted to deny 
 to her. In her walks with Mademoiselle Vic- 
 toire, her mother's femme-de-chambre, who took 
 charge of her, pice Mademoiselle de Mars dis- 
 pensed with, she was accustomed to employ 
 herself in the following manner : While Ma- 
 demoiselle Victoire sat down and knitted, the 
 little lady marched backwards and forwards be- 
 fore her, rehearsing imaginary dialogues and 
 building innumerable castles in the air. 
 
 " In these first dialogues, I always assumed 
 that Mademoiselle de Mars had come to see me 
 secretly. I related to her all that happened to 
 me, all that I thought : I made her speak per- 
 fectly in character. She gave me very good 
 advice for the present and for the future, and 
 recounted to me also, on her part, all kinds of 
 things, which / invented ivith marvellous facility. 
 I grew so fond of these imaginary conversations 
 that I doubt whether the reality would have had 
 a greater charm for me, and I was sadly discon- 
 certed when Mademoiselle Victoire put an end 
 to them by carrying me away, protesting to my 
 imaginary friend that I should return on the 
 following day at the same hour." 
 
 Madame du Deffand, philosophising one day 
 from her " tub," divided the world into three
 
 Madame de Genlis. 129 
 
 classes les trompeurs, Ics trompds, el les trom- 
 peltes. Madame de Lancy witness those ital- 
 icised sentences, witness her memoirs passim 
 belonged, undoubtedly, to the last of these. 
 But she has been criticised as if vanity was a 
 rarity, or self-laudation an uncommon and a 
 monstrous feature of this kind of composition. 
 It is but fair, however, to remember that in this 
 case the education of the writer had peculiarly 
 qualified her for the style, that her talents had 
 hit the taste of the time, and gained her ex- 
 travagant applause, and that, at least, she seems 
 to have been thoroughly aware of her fault. 
 
 "Since I had lost Mademoiselle de Mars" 
 [who, by the way, appears to have been rather 
 more sensible than those about her] , ' ' vanity had 
 become the chief motive of all my actions. My 
 heart and my reasoning powers were so little cul- 
 tivated, I was praised so extravagantly for tri- 
 fles, that I had acquired a puerile amour propre 
 which made me attach an absurd importance 
 to all the merely ornamental talents which could 
 give a certain celebrity." 
 
 Quitting Passy, the mother and daughter re- 
 turned to Paris lodgings, where the music and 
 singing made great progress. At this time, she 
 says, she practised from eight to ten hours a day. 
 The famous Philidor gives her lessons, and she 
 
 K
 
 130 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 learns to use several instruments, among others 
 that one which the late M. Victor Hugo per- 
 sisted in calling the " bugpipe." But the harp 
 is preferred before all ; indeed, she takes credit 
 for having made the instrument fashionable 
 and " King David's fortune." 
 
 The summer of 1761 was spent in another 
 country house, where they make the acquaint- 
 ance of that Madame d'Esparbes of the little 
 hands whose privilege it was to peel cherries for 
 Louis XV., a distinction which was so highly 
 valued that the lady is said to have endured 
 frequent bleeding in order to maintain their 
 "dazzling whiteness." After this Madame de 
 St. Aubin took a small house in the Rue 
 d'Aguesseau, where, among other visitors, come 
 the pastellist Latour, the musician and chess- 
 player, Philidor, and Honavre, the pianist. 
 They saw a great deal of good society, but 
 her instinctive good taste, she tells us, warned 
 her that her mother was far too prodigal of her 
 daughter's singing and playing. 
 
 Meanwhile M. de St. Aubin. returning from 
 St. Domingo, it is to be presumed with his 
 fortune retrieved, was taken by the English and 
 imprisoned at Launceston. At Launceston he 
 formed the acquaintance of a brother in mis- 
 fortune, the Count Brulart de Gerilis, an officer
 
 Madame de Genii's. 131 
 
 in the navy, who not only procured his friend's 
 release after he had been himself set free, but 
 upon his descriptions and the judicious exhibi- 
 tion of a portrait, fell in love with Madame de 
 Lancy. Her father died shortly after his return 
 to France of a disorder aggravated by pecuniary 
 difficulties. His widow found a temporary re- 
 fuge in the Convent of the Filles du Pnlcieux 
 Sang. Here our heroine received an offer of 
 marriage from a friend of her father the Baron 
 d'Andlau, who conceived the original idea of 
 forwarding his bulky pedigree by his valet, to 
 assist her. in the consideration of the matter, 
 but without success. Probably the fact that 
 M. de Genlis's uncle was Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, which made him a more eligible suitor, 
 had something to do with it. We all know that 
 Miss Rebecca Sharpe who in many things is 
 not unlike Madame de Lancy would have 
 been barely courteous to Jos. Sedley if she hap- 
 pened to hope that Captain Rawdon Crawley 
 would prance up on his black charger from the 
 Knightsbridge Barracks. The Baron, however, 
 determined to be of the family, and resigning the 
 filia. pulchrior, laid siege to the pulchra mater, 
 whom he married about eighteen months after. 
 
 From the Prdcieux Sang they moved to Ma- 
 dame du Deffand's convent, St. Joseph. Madame
 
 132 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 de Lancy's dates and age depend very often upon 
 her momentary taste and fancy ; but it was ap- 
 parently during her stay here, or in November, 
 1763, when she was seventeen, she says, that, 
 much to the disgust of his very arbitrary guar- 
 dian, M. de Genlis married her. With the 
 exception of his brother, M. le Marquis de 
 Genlis, most of her husband's relatives scouted 
 the pair, and after a week or two M. de Genlis 
 carried her to the convent of Origny. Here 
 she remained until April, 1764, while her hus- 
 band was in garrison at Nancy, for he was now 
 a colonel of grenadiers, and she seems to have 
 passed the time very pleasantly. We have here- 
 tofore seen her as Cupid ; she now appears as 
 Puck, to say nothing of a part seldom attempted 
 by ladies : 
 
 " I cried a good deal at losing M. de Genlis " 
 [she had a ' gift of tears ' quite equal to Loyola's] , 
 "and afterwards amused myself immensely at 
 Origny. ... I had a pretty room inside the con- 
 vent with my maid, and I had a servant who 
 lodged with the abbess's people in the outer build- 
 ing. ... I enjoyed myself, and they liked me ; 
 I often played my harp to Madame TAbbesse ; 
 I sang motets in the organ-gallery of the church, 
 and played tricks upon the nuns. I scoured the 
 corridors at night-time that is to say, at mid-
 
 Madame de Genii's. 133 
 
 night attired usually ' en (liable,' with horns 
 and a blackened face, and in this guise I woke up 
 the younger nuns, whilst I crept softly into the 
 cells of the older ones, whom I knew to be 
 thoroughly deaf, and rouged and patched them 
 carefully without disturbing their slumbers. 
 They got up every night to go to the choir, 
 and one may fancy their surprise when, having 
 dressed hastily without glasses, they met in the 
 church and found themselves thus travestied. 
 I went freely into the cells, for the nuns are for- 
 bidden to lock themselves in, and are obliged to 
 leave their keys in the doors both day and night. 
 During the whole of the Carnival I gave balls 
 twice a week in my room with the permission 
 of the abbess. They allowed me to have in the 
 village fiddler, who was sixty years of age and 
 blind of one eye. He piqued himself upon 
 knowing all the steps and figures, and I re- 
 member that he called the chasses, flanquts. 
 My company was composed of nuns and pen- 
 sionnaircs : the former acted as men, the latter 
 were the ladies. My refreshments consisted of 
 cider and excellent pastry, which was made in 
 the convent. I have been to many grand balls 
 since, but I question whether I ever danced at 
 any more heartily or with greater gaiety." 
 Yet, notwithstanding all these escapades, she
 
 134 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 still found time to acquire various kinds of in- 
 formation. She learned to bring up fowls, to 
 make pastry and side-dishes. " My guitar, my 
 harp, and my pen employed me a great part of 
 the day, and I devoted at least two hours every 
 morning to reading. I was very ignorant of 
 books, for up to that period all my time had 
 been devoted to music." At Origny, too, she 
 systematically perfects her fictitious dialogues ; 
 at Origny, again, she begins to make copious 
 extracts from all she reads, and to scribble 
 verses among other things an epistle upon the 
 " Tranquillity of the Cloister." 
 
 In the spring of 1764 M. de Genlis fetched 
 away his affectionate wife, who accompanied 
 him very unwillingly to his brother's seat at 
 Genlis. M. le Marquis de Genlis was at this 
 time " under the ban." His arbitrary guardian, 
 M. de Puisieux, had not only already shut him 
 up for five years in the Castle of Saumur for his 
 incorrigible gaming, but he had for the last two 
 been living in a kind of exile at his estate of 
 Genlis, under pain of making a good marriage. 
 At the present moment he was absent at Paris, 
 we presume upon what Mr. Weller the elder 
 calls " patrole." 
 
 At Genlis the newly-married pair appear to 
 have lived very happily ; and here, aided by the
 
 Madame de Genlis. 135 
 
 counsels of a second-rate man of letters, M. de 
 Sauvigny, Madame de Genlis pursued her mul- 
 tifarious studies with great energy : 
 
 " Every day. when we came in from walking, 
 we" [M. de Genlis, M. de Sauvigny, and her- 
 self] " read aloud for an hour. In a space of 
 four months we thus got through the ' Lettres 
 Provinciates, " the letters of Madame de Sevigne, 
 and the plays of Corneille. Besides this I read 
 in my room, and time passed very pleasantly 
 and quickly. A surgeon of La Fere, called M. 
 Milet, used to come to Genlis every week ; with 
 him I went over my old anatomical studies, and, 
 moreover, learned to bleed, an accomplishment 
 which I have since perfected under the learned 
 Chamousset. I learned also to dress wounds. 
 In fact, I lost no opportunity," etc. 
 
 Then she learns riding under the auspices of 
 a soldier of fortune in the neighbourhood, and 
 is almost lost in seeking adventurously for un- 
 discovered countries. 
 
 " But this new passion did not make me 
 neglect either my music or my studies ; M. de 
 Sauvigny superintended my reading, and I made 
 extracts. I had discovered in the pantry a large 
 folio book, intended for the kitchen accounts ; I 
 had taken possession of it, and I wrote down in 
 it a detailed journal of my doings and reflections,
 
 136 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 intending to give it to my mother when com- 
 pleted ; I wrote every day a few lines, some- 
 times whole pages. Neglecting no branch of 
 learning, I endeavoured to gain some insight 
 into field-labour and gardening. I went to see 
 the cider made. I went to watch all the work- 
 men in the village at work, the carpenter, the 
 weaver, the basket-maker, etc. I learned to 
 play at billiards and several games of cards, as 
 piquet, reversis, etc. M. de Genlis drew figures 
 and landscapes capitally " [parfaitemeni is her 
 word] " in pen and ink ; I commenced drawing 
 and flower-painting." 
 
 M. le Marquis de Genlis having managed to 
 find his heiress, is married to her, and every- 
 thing in consequence goes merry as his marriage- 
 bell. In September, 176$, Madame de Genlis 
 becomes a mother, after which she is visited by 
 her relations, who thereupon carry her to court. 
 She has left a most laughable description of the 
 terrors of her toilet, over which important busi- 
 ness Madame de Puisieux and her daughter, the 
 Mare"chale d'Estre'e, wrangle most unbecomingly. 
 Her hair is thrice dressed before her judges de- 
 cide how it shall be finally worn. They rouge 
 and powder her most lavishly. Then they insist 
 upon squeezing her into her " dress body," in 
 order that she may grow accustomed to it,
 
 Madame de Genlis. 137 
 
 lacing her so tightly that she can barely endure 
 the pressure. An angry and prolonged dispute 
 afterwards arises upon the question of the ruff, 
 during which time the unfortunate candidate for 
 court honours is obliged to stand, and when the 
 debate is over, she is so worn out that she can 
 hardly walk in to dinner. The ruff is taken off 
 and replaced at least four times, and the matter 
 is at last decided by the overwhelming influence 
 of the Marechale's waiting-maids. After the 
 farce of dinner (for she is too tightly laced to 
 eat anything), during the whole of which the 
 discussion is carried on with great acrimony, 
 she is requested to get into her hoop and train, 
 in order to rehearse the curtsey which Gardel, 
 the ballet-master of the opera, has been occu- 
 pied in teaching her. This is a partial success, 
 although Madame de Puisieux forbids her to 
 slide back her foot in order to disengage her 
 train, a course which leaves her no resource but 
 to fall upon her face, in order to avoid the other 
 extreme of being " theatrical." At last, when 
 they start, she manages secretly to remove a 
 little of the obnoxious colour ; but Madame de 
 Puisieux immediately pulls out a rouge-box, and 
 plasters her more thickly than before. How- 
 ever, everything goes off well .. and she manages 
 to admire the king.
 
 138 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 In 1766 she again has a daughter, after which 
 her aunt, the Madame de Montesson who mar- 
 ried the Duke of Orleans in 1773, takes her to 
 Tile Adam, the famous country house of the 
 Prince de Conti, which for a jeune personne 
 was the highest of honours. Thence they fare 
 to Villers-Cotterets, the seat of the Duke of 
 Orleans, and afterwards to Madame de Pui- 
 sieux's, at Sillery, where the young countess, 
 returning to that character of ingenue which she 
 had played so successfully at Passy, constructs 
 and acts out a clever little drawing-room scene 
 which completely wins over the elder lady, who 
 had hitherto been anything but amiable. 
 
 To sum up. The " royal blue eyes " of 
 majesty have shone upon her, and she is marked 
 with the Versailles sign-manual. She has ap- 
 peared at Tile Adam, and propitiated her unpro- 
 pitious relatives. She may now be said to have 
 made her d6but. 
 
 IV. 
 
 RESTLESS and frivolous, ennuyds and blasts, 
 asking incessantly, like her friend M. Dame- 
 zague, " Que ftrons-nous domain matin)" the 
 fine gentlemen and ladies of 1765 gave a warm 
 welcome to the new debutante in good society.
 
 Madame de Genlis. 139 
 
 She was young and handsome, a capital actress 
 and a better musician ; she had in reality, or 
 affected to have, a childish gaiety and an insati- 
 able appetite for freak which were quite in keep- 
 ing with the reigning fashion, whilst her uneasy 
 craving for notoriety occupied her unceasingly 
 in catering for the public amusement. The 
 record of the next dozen years of her life is 
 trifling enough. It is an endless chronicle of 
 tricks and mystifications, of mummeries and tra- 
 vesties ; an interlude which is all the play 
 or, better, a comddie-ballet after the fashion 
 of the Bourgeois Genlilhomme or the Malade 
 Imaginaire. Now, like a modern Poppaea, we 
 see her riding off on a donkey, in company with 
 the Marquise de Genlis, both disguised as peas- 
 ants, to buy up all the milk in the vicinity, in 
 order to have a bath A la Romaine ; now se- 
 cretly learning the dulcimer in a garret at Sil- 
 lery, with the view of surprising Madame de 
 Puisieux in the character of a jeune Alsacienne, 
 whose costume, it is needless to say, she wears 
 for a fortnight afterwards. Acting always in 
 Norman country houses to audiences of five hun- 
 dred, at Tile Adam, at Villers-Cotterets, at Sil- 
 lery, at Vaudreuil and with a success that 
 draws tears of vexation from her less-gifted sis- 
 ters. At one place they will barely relinquish
 
 140 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 her at bed-time, her bon-mots are cited, and her 
 merits rehearsed by common consent. She ap- 
 pears, too, to have been sufficiently satisfied 
 with the life she led at all events, before she 
 entered the Palais Royal. " This was styled 
 a frivolous kind of existence," says she, speak- 
 ing of M. d'Albaret, fribble and virtuoso; "as 
 for me, I think it far happier and more amiable 
 than a life devoted to the acquisition of wealth 
 or the intrigues of ambition." Moreover, her 
 intention in the preservation of these things is 
 purely utilitarian. She is good enough, in fact, 
 to furnish us with the MORAL d sa manure. 
 A propos of the fore-mentioned Alsacian dis- 
 guise, she writes " It is not without design 
 that I enter into these minor details ; they will 
 not be wholly useless to young ladies who may 
 hereafter peruse this work. I wish to persuade 
 them that youth is never happy unless it is ami- 
 able that is to say, docile, modest, and at- 
 tentive and that the true rdle " [always a role, 
 be it observed!] " of a jcune personne is to 
 please in her family, and to bring into it gaiety, 
 amusement, and joy.'" The sentiments are ir- 
 reproachable. Let us trust that the jeune per- 
 sonne will not mistake the wearing of becoming 
 fancy-dresses, the frequent exhibition of her 
 " little talents," and the continual gratification
 
 Madame de Genlis. 141 
 
 of her vanity and love of praise, as the primary 
 and principal means to the end she has in 
 view. 
 
 Perhaps the best idea of her mode of life at 
 this time may be gained by the recital of her 
 visit to Vaudreuil, in Normandy, the seat of the 
 President Portal. Here, responding to M. 
 Damezague's eternal " Que ftrons-nous demain 
 matinl" we find her organising and drilling a 
 company of amateurs ; acting a piece by herself 
 in order to teach them ; writing a drama in two 
 days based upon a local tradition (with a "charm- 
 ing rdle " for herself of a wigged and bearded 
 old man) ; re-casting in six more Favart's three- 
 act comedy of " Les Trois Sultanes," with another 
 part for herself in which she sings, and dances, 
 and plays on the harp, the harpsichord, the bag- 
 pipe, the guitar, the dulcimer, and the hurdy- 
 gurdy. Nor must it be supposed that she could 
 do no more. " I only wanted my pardessus de 
 viole," she writes, "but I had not used it for 
 more than three years, and my mandolin would 
 have had but a poor success after my guitar, 
 which I played infinitely better." Eight instru- 
 ments in all nine, in point of fact, if we 
 add another upon which her proficiency is re- 
 markable, but which politeness forbids us again 
 to particularise.
 
 142 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 From Vaudreuil they made an excursion to 
 Dieppe to visit the ocean, which as yet she had 
 not seen. In the face of Nature, she takes care 
 to tell us, she was so profoundly impressed that 
 her companions complained of her dullness ; 
 nor does she omit to state that Neptune re- 
 ceived her very discourteously. When they 
 returned to Vaudreuil they find that the presi- 
 dent had received information that certain ad- 
 miring corsairs, who had witnessed the marine 
 exploits of Madame la Comtesse and Madame 
 de Merode, her companion, had determined, in 
 consequence, to carry them off to the Grand 
 Seigneur's seraglio. The only way in which 
 they can preserve themselves from so eminent 
 and imminent a fate is to be received as Vestals 
 in the temple of the Petit bois a species of sanc- 
 tuary in the president's private garden, which was 
 reserved for the more select end sacred of his 
 entertainments en petit comitd. To this temple 
 they were conducted by the nephew of their 
 host, the Count de Caraman, who left them al- 
 most immediately. Here they found the High 
 Priestess (Madame de Puisieux) and the High 
 Priest (M. de Portal) waiting to receive them. 
 The temple was decked (Ires-orndJ with garlands, 
 and the ladies of the company made up its chaste 
 sisterhood. When, with appropriate verses, they
 
 Madame de Genii's. 143 
 
 had been admitted, and the evening shades were 
 closing in, a terrible noise of Turkish music is 
 heard approaching ; it is the Grand Seigneur 
 himself coming in person to besiege the temple. 
 The Pontifex Maximus resents this infringement, 
 and refuses to sanction the entry of the Infidels. 
 Thereupon some three hundred Turks leap the 
 walls (this is exquisite fooling !) and carry off 
 the Vestals willy-nilly. Madame la Comtesse 
 being slightly frightened and out of temper, 
 seems to have behaved with an intractable and 
 " savage virtue " that would have done credit to 
 a better cause, and which was certainly quite an 
 unexpected surprise to her exalted lover (M. de 
 Caraman), who was glittering with gold and 
 precious stones, and who looked, she records, 
 uncommonly ill in his turban. She absolutely 
 refused to be abducted, and this so rudely, that 
 he was greatly hurt. Laying hold of the lady, 
 he is pinched and scratched and kicked about 
 the legs (she says so) until the maltreated gen- 
 tleman at last loses his temper, and carries her 
 off in a fury. She is placed in a gorgeous pal- 
 anquin, and followed on foot by the irate Sultan, 
 limping, possibly, and reproaching her bitterly. 
 In the palanquin, however, soothed by the splen- 
 dour and the tribute to her talents, she recovers 
 her equanimity and manages to .mollify his of-
 
 144 Fur Frenchwomen. 
 
 fended Magnificence. The party are carried 
 through the illuminated gardens to a grandly- 
 decorated ball-room at the end of the park. 
 Here the delighted Oriental declares Madame 
 la Comtesse to be his favourite Sultana ; they 
 dance all night, and, plaudite gentes, the little 
 play is over, and the drop falls to the entire sat- 
 isfaction of every one concerned. 
 
 Among other things the idlers of 1766 were 
 indebted to her for an ingenious novelty which 
 she contrived for the balls of Madame de Crenay 
 the Quadrille des Proverbes. 
 
 " Each couple, in the preliminary two-and- 
 two procession which always preceded the per- 
 formance, represented a proverb, and every one 
 had chosen a motto. We had unanimously given 
 Madame de Lauzun " [Amelie de Boufflers, 
 afterwards guillotined], " 'Bonne renomme'e vaut 
 mieux que ceinture dordeS She was dressed with 
 the greatest simplicity, and wore a plain grey 
 girdle. She danced with M. de Belzunce. The 
 Duchess de Liancourt danced with the Count de 
 Boulainviliers, who wore the costume of an old 
 man ; their motto was ' A vieux chat jeune 
 souris." 1 Madame de Marigni danced with M. de 
 St. Julien, dressed as a negro : she passed her 
 handkerchief from time to time over his face, 
 which signified, ' A laver la t$te d'un Maure on
 
 Madame de Genlis. 145 
 
 perd sa lessive." I don't remember the proverb 
 or the partner of my sister-in-law, the Marquise 
 de Genlis. My own dancer was the Vicomte 
 de Laval, magnificiently attired and blazing with 
 jewellery. I was dressed as a peasant girl. Our 
 proverb was, ' Contentement passe richesse.' I 
 appeared gay and lively ; the vicomte, without 
 any acting, looked sad and ennuyd. Thus we 
 made ten. I had written the air it was very 
 pretty and easily danced to. Gardel composed 
 the figures, which, in accordance with my idea, 
 represented another proverb ' Reculer pour 
 mieux sauter.' He made of this the prettiest 
 and liveliest quadrille that I have ever seen." 
 
 It had a great success, notwithstanding the 
 schemes of an envious coalition, who attempted 
 to disturb the performers at the bal de VOptra 
 by the gambols of an immense cat (a little Savo- 
 yard in disguise), which represented an adverse 
 proverb " // ne faut pas rtveiller le chat qui 
 dorl" The spectators, however, interfered to 
 protect the dancers. 
 
 For all that they were the polished exemplars 
 whom uncouth Europeans " came to copy, and 
 vainly strove to imitate" amongst the rest 
 Mr. Laurence Sterne, who is here in 1762, a 
 fortnight deep in dinners and suppers, and pro- 
 testing that in savoir-vivre the place exceeds all 
 
 L
 
 146 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 places on the globe these fine ladies and gen- 
 tlemen did a number of little things, doubtless 
 in the " pure innocence " which prompted his 
 Tristram 
 
 " That would have made Punctilio stare and gasp." 
 
 r The stately old Marechale de Luxembourg, 
 oracle of petits-soupers as she was, must not for 
 a moment be mistaken for our respectable and 
 never-too-much-to-be-honoured Mrs. Grundy. 
 And it is with a due respect for the awful nominis 
 umbra, who is supposed to sit in eternal judg- 
 ment over our popular propriety, that we select 
 the following from amongst the lighter examples 
 in this way. In their house in the Rue St. Do- 
 minique, M. and Madame de Genlis kept an 
 Italian abbd, who read Tasso with the lady, and 
 was in addition an excellent musician. The 
 poor fellow was taken ill with cholera, and died 
 suddenly one evening at ten o'clock. Madame 
 de Genlis, who had been present at his death- 
 bed, was so struck with his face, that she de- 
 clares she will not sleep under the same roof 
 with the corpse. Forthwith the horses are put 
 to and she goes off to sleep at Madame de 
 Balincour's, where the gentleman gave up his 
 room to her. At half-past twelve she retired to 
 rest. In a few minutes she fell asleep, but was
 
 Madame de Genii's. 147 
 
 presently awakened by the entrance of M. de 
 Balincour, " bon vieillard fort spirituel," sing- 
 ing a little song in a merry voice, whilst a low 
 whispering betokened that there were five or six 
 persons in the room. This was the little song 
 to the air of "La Baronnc : " 
 
 " Dans mon alcdve 
 Je m'arrachtrai les cheveux ; (bis) 
 Je sens que je deviendrai chanve 
 Sije n'obtiens ce queje veux 
 Dans mon alcfoe" 
 
 To which Madame la Comtesse, nothing dis- 
 concerted, replied after a moment's silence with 
 the following impromptu to the same tune. It 
 so happened, fortunately for her, that the bon 
 vieillard was almost bald : 
 
 " Dans votre alcSve 
 Mcderez l*ardeur de vos fetix ; (bis) 
 Car, enfin, pour devenir chaiive 
 II fatidrait avoir des cheveux 
 Dans votre alcdve" 
 
 The answer, of course, caused a 'general laugh, 
 and had " the most brilliant success. 1 ' Lights 
 are brought in, the ladies of the family sit upon 
 the bed, the gentlemen make a circle round it, 
 and the lively company talk of a thousand things 
 until three in the morning, when M. de Balin- 
 cour goes out, returning almost immediately 
 dressed as a pastry-cook, bearing an immense
 
 148 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 basket of sweetmeats, preserves, and fruits. 
 This prolongs the entertainment until five, for 
 the merry gentleman detains them more than 
 half-an-hour in proposing all kinds of amuse- 
 ments, as violins, magic-lanterns, and puppet- 
 shows, and when at last Madame la Comtesse 
 is allowed to sleep, she is awakened again at 
 twelve by the new frolics of the bon pieillard. 
 M. de Genlis, appearing to claim his wife, is 
 detained forcibly, and for the next five days 
 there is nothing but acting of parts, ballets, 
 balls, theatres, concerts, fairs, songs, and games 
 
 in fact, " the noisiest five days that she ever 
 passed." 
 
 Up to the year 1770, they, or rather she 
 for the absences of her husband were frequent 
 
 had lived principally with Madame de Pui- 
 sieux. In 1770, after some months spent in re- 
 tirement with this lady, who was mourning the 
 death of her husband, Madame de Genlis left 
 her entirely to enter the Palais Royal as lady-in- 
 waiting to Madame la Duchesse de Chartres, in 
 whom we recognise the somewhat sentimental 
 and romantic Mademoiselle de Bourbon who 
 was the friend of Marie de Lamballe. M. de 
 Genlis, in the meantime, had obtained an ap- 
 pointment as captain of the duke's guards. The v 
 duchess seems (at first) to have taken a great
 
 Madame ae Genks. 149 
 
 liking to her new attendant, who obligingly 
 teaches her to spell, a kindly office which she 
 had already performed for Madame la Marquise 
 de Genlis. Our space will not permit us to 
 linger over her portraits of the notabilities of the 
 Palais Royal, which strove with the Temple 
 (the palace of the Prince de Conti) for the first 
 place among the salons of Paris. Whilst hasten- 
 ing to the next important epoch in her life (in 
 1776), we may note that she had already visited 
 Holland, Italy, Switzerland, and some parts of 
 Germany. To England she had not yet come. 
 Her experiences of Rousseau and Voltaire, whom 
 she knew and visited during this time, will be 
 given in the succeeding section. Just one more 
 extract and we have done with the frivolous 
 it were juster, perhaps, to say the most frivolous 
 portion of the Memoirs. This little incident 
 of the Porcherons is a last example of the morbid 
 desire for excitement which led the great world 
 to envy even the coarse sallies and "vigorous 
 dancing " of the guinguettes of the universal 
 taste for travesties and disguises, which prompted 
 even rigorous Madame Roland to ride off on 
 donkey-back en cuisiniHre with arm akimbo 
 and air of gaping thickwittedness after her 
 cousin Trude. For the better appreciation of 
 the performance we subjoin a list of the
 
 150 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 ramati? 
 
 Madame la Comtesse de POTOCKA. 
 
 (A Polish lady of rank.) 
 
 Madame la Comtesse de GENLIS. 
 
 (Lady-in-Waitin to the Duchess of Chartres.) 
 
 Madame la Baronne D'ANDLAU. 
 
 (Mother to the above over fifty.) 
 
 M. de MAISONNEUVE. 
 (Chamberlain to King Stanislas of Poland.) 
 
 M. de GEXLIS. 
 ( Captain of Guards to the Duke of Chartres.) 
 
 M. GILLIER. 
 
 ( Ci-devant Major in an East Indian Regiment fifty- ) 
 Scene The " Great Conqueror" of the Porcherons. 
 
 The Madame de Potocka in question had made 
 the acquaintance of Madame de Genlis at Aix- 
 la-Chapelle, and had been " doing " Paris under 
 her auspices. As yet they had not explored the 
 guinguettes taverns outside the barriers tea- 
 gardens, in fact, where tea was unknown, and 
 M. de Genlis had proposed to take them to the 
 most noted house of the kind. The ladies were 
 to go as cooks, MM. de Maisonneuve and 
 Genlis as servants in livery. 
 
 " The next day," she says, " I was supping 
 at the Palais Royal with Madame de Potocka. 
 On this particular evening she was splendidly 
 dressed in a gold robe, and wearing an enor- 
 mous quantity of diamonds. At eleven M. de
 
 Madame de Genlis. 151 
 
 Genlis came up to her very gravely, and reminded 
 her that it was time to get ready to go to the 
 Porcherons. This notification addressed as 
 it was to the most majestic figure I have ever 
 seen in my life made me burst with laughter. 
 We went upstairs to dress, which we did in my 
 mother's room, as she had gone to bed, and 
 wished to see our costumes. Madame de Po- 
 tocka's noble and stately figure was somewhat 
 coarse, and needed setting off. In her disguise 
 she lost all her dignity, and when she had got 
 on her jacket, red handkerchief, round cap, and 
 check apron, she looked for all the world like a 
 genuine cook, whilst I, on the contrary, in similar 
 costume, lost nothing of my elegant and distin- 
 guished air, and was even more remarkable than 
 if I had been tastefully dressed. M. de Maison- 
 neuve had sent an excuse in the morning, so, as 
 we needed two men, we took M. Gillier, and set 
 off in a hackney coach at about half-past eleven. 
 I had the greatest success at the ' Great Con- 
 queror,' where there was a numerous company, 
 and vanquished, at first sight, the runner of M. 
 le Marquis de Brancas, who, waiting upon his 
 master, must have seen me twenty times at table, 
 but did not in the least recognise me. The 
 dress, which made Madame de Potocka look 
 considerably older, made me some ten or twelve
 
 152 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 years younger ; I looked sixteen or seventeen 
 at the most ; and we acted our parts so well that 
 no one had the least suspicion of our being in 
 disguise. I began by dancing a minuet with the 
 runner, with the most countrified air in the world, 
 and afterwards a quadrille. In the meantime M. 
 Gillier ordered some pigeons a la crapaudine " 
 [flattened and broiled], " with a salad, for our 
 refreshment. We sat down together at a little 
 table, where the gaiety and gallantry of M. de 
 Genlis, divided between Madame de Potocka 
 and myself, delighted us exceedingly. There 
 was always something so original and agreeable, 
 and, at the same time, so witty in his pleasantry, 
 that he would have amused the most morbid of 
 mortals. 
 
 " A finishing stroke, however, was put to our 
 merriment by a most unexpected occurrence. 
 It was customary to enter the guinguetle singing, 
 and presently we heard some one bawling at the 
 top of his voice, 
 
 ' Lison dormait (fa/is un bocage 
 Un bras par-ci, un bras par-la? etc. 
 
 " Looking towards the door, we saw two per- 
 sons come in singing and dancing, one dressed 
 as a servant-girl, the other in one of my liveries. 
 I knew them in an instant, and jumping up, 
 flung myself upon the servant's neck, for it was
 
 Madame de Genlis. 153 
 
 no other than my mother leaning upon the arm 
 of M. de Maisonneuve. She had contrived this 
 little trick with him, and for this reason he had 
 excused himself. Our joy and gratitude were 
 unbounded, and there really was a good deal of 
 grace and goodness in this jest of a person as old 
 as my mother was. She sat down at our table 
 with her companion, and she and M. de Genlis 
 were the life and soul of the evening one of 
 the gayest and most charming that I ever passed 
 in my life. I had never laughed so much since 
 the Genlis and Sillery days, and it was three in the 
 morning before we tore ourselves away from the 
 * Great Conqueror ' of the Porcherons." 
 
 V. 
 
 WITH the exception of her acquaintanceship 
 with M. de Sauvigny, Madame de Genlis does 
 not appear to have formed any literary connection 
 of lasting importance previous to her entry of 
 Belle Chasse. Her more-than-friendship with 
 the "flower of pedants," La Harpe, belongs 
 properly to the subsequent period. D'Alembert 
 she had seen before her marriage ; he had come 
 to hear her harp-playing in the Rue Neuve St. 
 Paul, but she " disliked him extremely." " He
 
 154 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 had a vulgar expression of face," she said, i4 and 
 told coarse comical anecdotes in a shrill tone 
 of voice." Of Raynal, Marie de Corday's 
 " master," who visited at Madame de Puisieux's, 
 she has left a slight sketch, also en noir. As a 
 child she had heard Marmontel read his tales. 
 Something, too, she had seen of the playwright 
 and librettist, Sedaine, whose flame yet flickers 
 in the " Gageure Imprdvue" and the " Philosophy 
 sans le savoir ; " musketeer Dorat had written 
 her some pretty complimentary verses ; Delille 
 had read part of his AUne'id to her, and she had 
 met Gibbon and Buffon. She had visited Vol- 
 taire and known Rousseau, and, as in duty 
 bound, she has left lengthy accounts of her 
 experiences. 
 
 Her short friendship with " Minerva's owl," 
 as Madame de Mirepoix called Rousseau, is 
 thoroughly characteristic both of himself and 
 Madame la Comtesse. He was then at Paris, 
 morbid as ever, neither making nor receiving 
 visits, and, if we may believe her recollections, 
 gaining a scanty subsistence (as he had done 
 before) by copying music. Madame de Genlis 
 had not yet read his works, and admired him 
 chiefly for his opera, the Ddvin da Village. 
 One day M. de Sauvigny told her in confidence 
 that her husband was about to play her a trick
 
 Madame de Gen Us. 155 
 
 in other words to pass off Preville, the Foote of 
 the French stage, the actor whom Sterne calls 
 " Mercury himself," as the author of Emile, and 
 the lady promised to appear the dupe of this so- 
 called " mystification," a very popular, and often 
 very unworthy, amusement of the day. 
 
 "A Crispin en philosophe ! the idea was 
 delightful. Unhappily, M. de Genlis forgot 
 his scheme, and some three weeks afterwards 
 brought Simon Pure himself to visit his wife. 
 Of course she was delighted. The little man 
 who appeared to her, with his round wig and his 
 marro/i-coloured stockings, his very coat and 
 attitudes, presented the most perfect take-off to 
 her appreciative eyes. Moreover, as it was 
 only Preville, there was not the least necessity 
 for any ceremony. So she sang the airs of the 
 Dtvin, laughed, played, talked of everything 
 that came into her head in short, was unusu- 
 ally genuine and delightful, and, to the eyes of 
 her astonished husband, excessively eccentric, 
 to say the least of it. Rousseau, quite unaccus- 
 tomed to such charming freshness and simplicity, 
 was so pleased that he actually promised to dine 
 with them next day. Of course when he was 
 gone there was naturally a full explanation, and 
 extreme confusion, perhaps vexation, upon the 
 part of the lady when she discovered her mis-
 
 156 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 take. However, no harm was done ; the matter 
 was kept a secret, and the for once unsus- 
 pecting Rousseau told M. de Sauvigny that he 
 considered the young countess to be a jeune per- 
 sonne " the most unaffected, cheerful, and devoid 
 of pretensions he had ever met with." 
 
 For the lady, she never knew " a less impos- 
 ing or more kindly man of letters. He spoke 
 simply of himself, and without bitterness of his 
 enemies/' He did full justice to the talents of 
 Voltaire, but added that pride and flatteries had 
 spoiled him. He had already read some of his 
 Confessions to Madame d'Egmont, but he con- 
 sidered that our countess was far too young for 
 such a confidence. She had not yet read Emile ; 
 she would do well to do so when she was older, 
 he said. His works, indeed, he mentioned fre- 
 quently. He had written all the letters of Julie 
 on fancy note-paper with vignettes, he told them, 
 then folded them, and read and re-read them in 
 his walks, as if he had really received them from 
 his mistress. " He had most piercing eyes, and 
 a delightful smile, full of finesse and sweetness." 
 
 An acquaintance with Rousseau, however, 
 could not endure for ever. For five months he 
 dined with them nearly every day. He was 
 very gay and communicative, and she discovered 
 in him neither susceptibility nor caprice. At
 
 Madame de Genlis. 157 
 
 ** i 
 
 last, as ill-fortune would have it, he praised some 
 Sillery that he had tasted, and expressed a will- 
 ingness to receive a couple of bottles. M. de 
 Genlis courteously forwarded a case of five-and- 
 twenty. Rousseau's morbid hatred of patronage 
 took the alarm instanter. Back came the case 
 with a laconic epistle breathing flames and fury, 
 and renouncing the donors for ever. But this 
 time the countess wrote an apologetic letter, 
 and managed adroitly to patch up the wound. 
 On the next occasion she was not so successful. 
 She had managed to persuade him to accompany 
 her to the first representation of M . de Sauvigny's 
 Persiffleur. He had a great dislike to being 
 seen ; but she had procured a grated box with a 
 private entry. Upon reaching the theatre he 
 objected to the closing of the grate, and his 
 presence was, in consequence, soon discovered 
 by the house, who afterwards forgot him for the 
 piece. To the astonishment of his companions, 
 he grew frightfully sombre, refused to return to 
 supper with them, or to listen to their protesta- 
 tions, and the next day declared he would never 
 see them as long as he lived, for they had ex- 
 hibited him like a wild beast. This time the 
 case was hopeless, and although the lady was 
 able at a later period to render him some small 
 service, she felt no desire for any further inti-
 
 158 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 macy with the sensitive philosopher of the Rue 
 Platriere. 
 
 Of Voltaire she can only say, Vidi tantum. 
 In 1776, she was travelling for her health under 
 the escort of M. Gillier and a German painter 
 of the name of Ott. Being at Geneva, she wrote 
 for permission to visit Voltaire at Ferney, and 
 received a most gracious reply. He would re- 
 sign his dressing-gown and slippers in her favour, 
 he answered, and invited her to dinner and 
 supper. It was the custom (she says) for his 
 visitors, especially the younger ladies, to pale, 
 and stammer, and even faint upon their presen- 
 tation to the great man ; this, in fact, was the 
 etiquette of the Ferney court. Madame la 
 Comtesse, although unwilling to be pathetic, 
 determined at least to put aside her habitual sim- 
 plicity, to be less reserved, and, above all, less 
 silent. 
 
 With her she took M. Ott, who had never 
 read a line of the author, but was, nevertheless, 
 overflowing with the requisite enthusiasm. They 
 passed on their way the church which he had 
 built, with its superscription of " Voltaire d 
 Dieu," which made her shudder. They arrived 
 three-quarters of an hour too soon, but she 
 piously consoled herself by thinking that she had 
 possibly prevented the penning of a few addi-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 159 
 
 tional blasphemies. In the antechamber they 
 discovered a Correggio, whilst occupying the 
 place of honour in the drawing-room was a veri- 
 table signboard, upon which Voltaire was repre- 
 sented as a victorious archangel trampling his 
 grovelling Pompignans and Frerons under his 
 feet. They were received by Madame Denis 
 (the heroine of that unseemly and unfortunate 
 flight from the great Frederick) and Madame 
 de St. Julien, who told them that Voltaire would 
 shortly appear. In the interim Madame^de St. 
 Julien took her for a ramble, very much to the 
 detriment of an elaborate toilette, which she 
 confesses she had not neglected. Indeed, when 
 at last she hears that the great man is ready to 
 receive her, a passing glance in the glass assures 
 her, to her complete discomforture, that she pre- 
 sents an utterly tumbled and pitiable appearance. 
 Madame de St. Julien had advised her to sa- 
 lute Voltaire, adding that he would certainly be 
 pleased. But he took her hand and kissed it, 
 which act of respect was quite sufficient to make 
 her embrace him with great good will. M. Ott 
 was almost transported to tears upon his in- 
 troduction. He produced some miniatures of 
 sacred subjects, which immediately drew from 
 M. de Voltaire a few critical remarks which were 
 highly offensive to his rigorous lady visitor. At
 
 160 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 dinner, she says, he seemed anything but amia- 
 ble, appearing to be always in a passion with 
 the servants, and calling to them at the top of 
 his voice, which was, however, one of his habits 
 of which she had already been warned. After 
 dinner Madame Denis played to them upon the 
 harpsichord in an old-fashioned style which car- 
 ried her auditress back to the reign of Louis 
 XIV., and after that their host took them for 
 a drive in his berime. Madame la Comtesse 
 shall finish in her own words : 
 
 " He took us into the village [of Ferney] to 
 see the houses he had built and the benevolent 
 institutions that he had established. He is 
 greater there than in his books, for one sees 
 everywhere a well-directed goodness of heart, 
 and one can hardly conceive that the same hand 
 which wrote so many impious, false, and wicked 
 things, should have performed such useful, wise, 
 and noble actions. He showed the village to 
 every stranger who came to visit him, but he 
 did it unaffectedly, spoke with the utmost sim- 
 plicity and good feeling on the subject, ac- 
 quainted us with everything that he had done, 
 without the least appearance of boasting, and I 
 know no one who could do as much. When 
 we got back to the chateau the conversation 
 was very lively ; we talked with great interest
 
 Madame de Gen Us. 161 
 
 of all that we had seen. I did not leave till 
 night-time. ... 
 
 "All the busts and portraits of him " [and they 
 may be numbered by hundreds] " are very like, 
 but no artist has ever rendered his eyes. I ex- 
 pected to find them brilliant and full of fire, and 
 they were certainly the liveliest I ever saw, but 
 they had something unspeakably ' velvety ' and 
 sweet about them. The whole soul of Zaire lay in 
 those eyes of his. His smile and his extremely 
 malicious laugh entirely altered this charming 
 expression of the face. He was greatly broken, 
 and an old-fashioned manner of dressing made 
 him look older still. He had a sepulchral voice, 
 which had a most curious effect, particularly as 
 he had a habit of talking very loud, although he 
 was not deaf. When neither religion nor his 
 enemies were discussed, his conversation was 
 simple, natural, and unpretentious, and conse- 
 quently, with such wit and talent as he pos- 
 sessed, perfectly delightful. It seemed to me 
 that he could not bear that any one should have, 
 on any point, a different opinion from his own, 
 and when opposed in the slightest degree his 
 manner became bitter and cutting. He had 
 certainly lost much of the politeness which he 
 should have had, but this was quite natural. 
 Since he has lived here people only visit him 
 
 M
 
 1 62 Four Frenchwouien, 
 
 to praise him to the skies, his decisions are 
 oracles, every one about him is at his feet, he 
 hears of nothing but the admiration that he in- 
 spires, and the most ridiculous exaggerations 
 only appear to him as ordinary homages.' 1 . . . 
 
 While at Zurich (we carefully follow her in 
 omitting the date, although it was possibly about 
 this time) she made an expedition to the country 
 house of a now half-forgotten idyllist and land- 
 scape-painter, whose dust-crowned Death of Abel 
 may now and then be discovered in a neglected 
 corner of the book-case hiding under cover of 
 Klopstock's Messiah Solomon Gessner. 
 
 His First Navigator (which Gardel, by the 
 way, had turned into a ballet) is, he tells her, 
 his favourite work, for he had composed it for 
 his wife in the commencement of their court- 
 ship. 
 
 " I had a great curiosity to make the acquaint- 
 ance of the lady whom he had married for love, 
 and who had made him a poet. I pictured her 
 to myself as a charming bergtre, and I expected 
 that Gessners house would be an elegant thatched 
 cottage, surrounded by shrubberies and flowers, 
 where nothing was drunk but milk, and where, 
 to use the German expression, every one walked 
 on roses. But when I arrived there I crossed 
 a little garden filled with cabbages and carrots,
 
 Madame de Genii's. 163 
 
 that began somewhat to discompose my dream- 
 ings of eclogues and idyls, which were entirely 
 upset, on entering the room, by a positive cloud 
 of tobacco-smoke, through which I dimly per- 
 ceived Gessner drinking beer and pulling at his 
 pipe by the side of a good lady in a jacket and 
 cap who was placidly knitting it was Madame 
 Gessner. But the good-natured greeting of the 
 husband and wife, their perfect union, their ten- 
 derness for their children, and their simplicity, 
 recall to mind the manners and the virtues which 
 the poet has sung ; it is always an idyl and the 
 golden age, not indeed in splendid sounding 
 verse, but in simple and unadorned language. 
 Gessner draws and paints landscape in water- 
 colour after a superior fashion ; he has sketched 
 all the sites that he has described in his poems. 
 He gave me a beautiful sketch that he had 
 done." 
 
 Rousseau in his self-imposed misery at Paris, 
 Voltaire in his court at Ferney, and this simple 
 poet and landscape-painter among his cabbages 
 and carrots, are pictures curiously contrasted. 
 Were it not for want of space, we might have 
 been betrayed into a moral " ci noire manitre."
 
 1 64 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " WE must represent to ourselves all fashiona- 
 ble female Europe, at this time," says Thacke- 
 ray, speaking, parenthetically, of the beautiful 
 Lady Coventry, whose death was hastened by 
 immoderate painting, " as plastered with white, 
 and raddled with red." The next occurrence 
 in the life of Madame la Comtesse to which 
 we can assign a bond-fide date concerns this 
 popular custom. On the 2$th of January, 1776, 
 she left off rouge. The resignation had a grave 
 significance in those days. It implied the giv- 
 ing up of pretentions to youth, and pomps and 
 vanities generally ; and was, in fact, a polite 
 " notice to friends" that the quondam illumina- 
 tor was about to betake herself to the half-lights 
 and the sad-coloured raiment which announced 
 the devote. Our heroine laments rather comi- 
 cally that " having always had religious senti- 
 ments, it is singular that many of her sacrifices 
 in this way should have had, nevertheless, a 
 merely mundane origin," for it appears that the 
 present step, in spite of its importance, was 
 rather the result of an accident than a conscien- 
 tious abnegation of her personal advantages. 
 Eight years before, at Villers-Cotterets, the
 
 Madame de Genlis. 165 
 
 talk happening to turn upon some elderly ladies 
 who still clung to the carnations of the Rue'St. 
 Honore^ Madame de Genlis had said that she 
 could not understand how the quitting of rouge 
 could possibly be a sacrifice. This inconceiva- 
 ble statement being questioned, she declared 
 that she would leave it off at thirty. M. de 
 Chartres politely pooh-poohed her decision, and 
 she consequently bet him a discretion a wager 
 in which no sum or article is named that she 
 would perform her promise. She did so, as we 
 have said, and this is the way in which the affair 
 was fully completed : 
 
 " Some fifteen days before my birthday, I 
 begged M. de Chartres to remember my discrd- 
 tion, and on the 25th of January I discovered in 
 my room a doll as large as life seated at my 
 desk, pen in hand, and wearing a head-dress 
 of millions [!] of quills. Upon one side of 
 the desk was a ream of splendid paper, and 
 upon the other thirty-two blank octavo books, 
 bound in green morocco, with twenty-four 
 smaller ones which were bound in red. At 
 the feet of the figure lay a case filled with note- 
 paper, letter-covers, sealing-wax, gold and silver 
 powder, knife, scissors, rule, compass, etc., etc. 
 I was charmed with my present, and I have 
 never since worn rouge."
 
 1 66 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 Long before, she says, it had been agreed 
 privately between herself and the Duchess of 
 Chartres that if the duchess had a daughter, 
 Madame de Genlis should be her governess. 
 According to the prevailing practice, the prin- 
 cesses of the blood had been hitherto brought 
 up by an under-governor, who took charge of 
 them up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. Ma- 
 dame la Comtesse, justly deciding that this 
 looking to the value of first impressions was 
 too precious an interval to be lost, had declared 
 her intention of taking them from their earliest 
 years, and had, moreover, determined to retire 
 with them into a convent. When, in August, 
 1777, the duchess became the mother of twins, 
 they were temporarily confided to the care of 
 Madame de Rochambeau, and, in pursuance of 
 the above-mentioned arrangement, a pavilion 
 was built in the neighbouring convent of Belle 
 Chasse, which the countess finally entered with 
 her charges. 
 
 The pavilion in question lay in the centre of 
 the garden of the convent, with which it was 
 connected by a trellised colonnade overhung 
 with vines. She seems to have at once con- 
 ceived a definite idea of her duties, and to 
 have carried it out consistently to the end. 
 The household was ordered with the strictest
 
 Madame de Genlis. 167 
 
 economy, the furniture was simple, and more 
 useful than ornamental. " I endeavoured," she 
 says, " to make even the furniture subserve to 
 my scheme of education." With this view the 
 walls were painted with medallions of all the 
 Roman emperors, carefully dated, the fire- 
 screens exposed the kings of France, while, 
 for convenience of reference, the hand-screens 
 were devoted to the gods and goddesses. Ge- 
 ography was remanded to the stairs, the maps 
 of the south lying at the bottom, and those of 
 the north at the top, so that the pleased ob- 
 server starting from " the palms and temples " 
 of the lowest step, slipped through "eternal 
 summer " somewhere in the middle of the flight, 
 and discovered the " North-West Passage" at 
 the summit. Over the doors, again, were scenes 
 from Roman history ; over the grating, in letters 
 of gold, was a sentence from the Spectator, 
 ''True happiness is of a retired nature, and an 
 enemy to pomp and noise." In all this we re- 
 cognise the heroine of St. Aubin and Sillery 
 but she is at her best. 
 
 She had soon almost a school. Besides Mile. 
 Adelaide d'Orleans, whose twin-sister died at 
 five, her own daughters, Caroline and Pulcherie, 
 lived with her. In the first year of her residence 
 at the convent she received a niece, Hennette de
 
 1 68 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 Sercey, later a nephew, Cesar, and ' ' a little Eng- 
 lish girl, the celebrated Pamela." Of Pamela 
 the world will probably never know more than 
 Madame la Comte-sse has chosen to tell. She 
 was sent from England the story goes in 
 accordance with the duke's request, in order to 
 help to perfect his children in the English lan- 
 guage. " Her name was Nancy Syms ; I called 
 her Pamela ; she did not know a word of French, 
 and in playing with the little, princesses she con- 
 tributed greatly to familiarise them with the 
 English language." In 1782, the duke, to the 
 great disgust of Palais Royal place-hunters, 
 boldly made Madame de Genlis Governor of his 
 three sons, the Duke of Valois (Louis Philippe), 
 then nine, the Duke of Montpensier, seven, and 
 the little Count of Beaujolais, who was about 
 three years old. She gave them a thoroughly 
 practical education. The princes rose at seven, 
 had lessons with their masters in Latin and arith- 
 metic until eleven, at which time they came to 
 their Governor, with whom they remained until 
 ten, when the convent was closed. She gave 
 them masters in botany, chemistry, and drawing 
 she invented a historical magic-lantern, the 
 slides of which were painted with scenes from 
 " sacred, ancient, and Roman history, together 
 with that of China and Japan." She was the
 
 Madame de Genlis. 169 
 
 first governor, she says, who taught languages 
 by conversation her pupils took their morning 
 walk in German, they dined in English, and they 
 supped in Italian. 
 
 When she received the princes the duke had 
 promised to buy them a country house. He 
 bought the estate of St. Leu, where they spent 
 eight months of the year. Here they gardened, 
 botanised, and practised chemistry Their Gov- 
 ernor, mindful of her old tastes, made them 
 act voyages in the park (notably those of Vasco 
 de Gama and Snelgrave), which were arranged 
 dramatically from La Harpe's abridgement of 
 Prev6t"s collection, and in these performances 
 the whole establishment took part. In the great 
 dining-room they had historical tableaux, which 
 David often grouped for them ; a theatre was 
 built in which they acted all the pieces out of 
 the Thdalre a" Education. In the winter the 
 indefatigable instructress taught them to make 
 portfolios, ribbons, wigs, pasteboard-work, 
 marble-paper, and artificial flowers ; to gild, to 
 turn, and to carpenter generally. The Duke of 
 Valois in particular was an excellent joiner. 
 When they went out it was still in pursuit of 
 instruction : they visited museums and manufac- 
 tories which they had coached up in the Ency- 
 clopJdie, thereby giving their Governor an oppor-
 
 170 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 v._ 
 
 tunity of declaring that the descriptions in that 
 valuable work are often faulty. On the whole, 
 this practico-historico-histrionical education, as 
 it would then have been described, seems to 
 have worked successfully. At worst it was a 
 decided advance upon the former system. The 
 pupils were happy and pleased with their teacher 
 she herself " led a delicious life at Belle 
 Chasse." Its chief fault, as many critics have 
 already pointed out, seems to have been that an 
 education so universal must of necessity be 
 superficial, and that a life so fruitful in facts 
 could have left but little room for the develop- 
 ment of natural impulses, or the growth of those 
 mere flowers of fancy and of life that neither toil 
 nor spin. 
 
 One does not easily recognise the cook-maid 
 of the Porcherons, or the mistress of the revels 
 at Vaudreuil, in this energetic and indefatigable 
 preceptress of the convent at Belle Chasse. In 
 those old dialogues of Passy and Origny, dia- 
 logues which she continues now as ever, we 
 heard her vaunting her shadowy interlocutor and 
 imaginary counsellor as far superior to that 
 " faithful admonition of a friend," most needful, 
 one would imagine, to a mind like hers, " ever 
 infused and drenched," as Bacon says, " in its 
 affections and customs." " My (imaginary)
 
 Madame de Genlis. 171 
 
 friend," she says, ' ; interrupted or interrogated 
 me ; her surprise, her admiration, and her eulo- 
 gies enchanted me. . . . What human friend 
 can enter into our sentiments, can love us, can 
 understand us so well as the fictitious one whom 
 we create for ourselves ? " 
 
 Yet in the extracts from the journals of the 
 education of her pupils we find her penning such 
 words as these : 
 
 " You will know your friends if they never 
 flatter you ; if they give you salutary advice at 
 the risk of displeasing you for the moment. . . . 
 If you meet with friends worthy of you, you are 
 bound to render them all the services you can 
 perform, without being unjust to others. . . . 
 You ought not to suffer any one of your friends 
 to be accused of any offence against yourself 
 without proofs, especially to your private ear. 
 Distrust every one who attempts to give you a 
 bad opinion of your friends ; envy is almost 
 always the motive of these informations, and 
 when they are not supported by positive proofs 
 you ought to despise them, and impose silence 
 by an air of coldness and of complete incredulity 
 upon those who are the informers." If proofs 
 are adduced, "before taking any decided step 
 you ought to have a clear and frank explanation 
 with your friend, for it is only thus that he
 
 172 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 can justify himself, and you would yourself be 
 blamable if you did not furnish him all the means 
 in your power for doing so." 
 
 Is Madame la Comtesse writing from convic- 
 tion ? or is she romancing en pedagogue just 
 discharging the last coachful of second-hand 
 moralities ? We cannot pretend to decide. The 
 sounds which we strike out of this "harp of 
 thousand strings " of ours are often discordant 
 and contradictory enough, and even our moralist, 
 good harpist as she was, could not make her life 
 harmonious. At least, the extracts show that 
 the Governor, dating from the class-room, could 
 write nobly enough of friends. Yet it is one of 
 the saddest things of these Memoirs that she 
 never seems to have had a dear or worthy friend. 
 Secure in her self-reliance, she grew old in all 
 those faults which the "faithful admonition" 
 would have mitigated or corrected. 
 
 At Belle Chasse she married both her daugh- 
 ters the elder to a Belgian nobleman, M. 
 Becelaer de Lawoestine, the younger to a M. de 
 Valence. At Belle Chasse, too, she acquired 
 both her credit and discredit as an author. In 
 1779-80 she published, under the title of ThdAtre 
 d" 1 Education, some little dramatic pieces for the 
 benefit of three officers who had been sentenced 
 to a fine or imprisonment for life. The publi-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 173 
 
 cation, under such circumstance, of these little 
 moral comedies, which, like Mr. Pitt's early 
 tragedy, had no love in them, " succeeded," she 
 writes to Gibbon, " beyond all her hopes." 
 Already, when, in the winter of 1777 and 1778, 
 her daughters had played them at the Palais 
 Royal, they had gained for their authoress the 
 approbation of the King-Critic, La Harpe, who, 
 in his complimentary verses, "adored, at once, 
 the author, the work, and the actresses." 
 
 " He became so passionately attached to me," 
 she afterwards says, "that I was obliged seri- 
 ously to restrain his enthusiasm." The affair 
 turned out in the " grand style." M. de La 
 Harpe went away to Lyons to cure his com- 
 plaint, and happily for his peace, returned heart- 
 whole. After this wind-up " in the grand style," 
 however, the matter appears to have ended in 
 the little style by a literary quarrel. 
 
 " We have here," says Franklin, writing from 
 Passy, in 1782, to Mrs. Hewson, "a female 
 writer on education, who has lately published 
 three volumes, which are much talked of. ... 
 They are much praised and censured." The 
 work referred to was Addle et Theodore, orLetlres 
 sur rEducation, her most important effort, and 
 one which procured her, she says, at once " the 
 suffrages of the public, and the irreconcilable
 
 174 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 hatred of all the so-called philosophers and their 
 partisans." Indeed, the satire of reigning follies, 
 the less defensible portraiture of individuals (of 
 which she was accused), and above all, her open 
 opposition to the powerful contemporary phi- 
 losophy, was not calculated to conciliate the 
 reigning powers in literature, or to acquire her 
 crowds of friends. Adele et Theodore was fol- 
 lowed, in 1784, by the VeilUes du Chdteau, in 
 which she pursued the same uncompromising 
 course, and yet appears to have been greatly 
 disgusted by the award of the Monthyon prize 
 to Madame d'Epinay for the second volume of 
 the Conversations d'Emilie. Our authoress, of 
 course, ascribes this blow to her enemies of the 
 Encyclopddie. " Madame d'Epinay was a phi- 
 losopher, and took good care not to talk of re- 
 ligion to her Emily." Her work in 1787, On 
 Religion considered as the only sure Foundation 
 of Happiness and of true Philosophy, which she 
 wrote for the first communion of the Duke of 
 Valois, put the finishing stroke to her reputation 
 as a Mere de I'Eglise, and opponent of liberty of 
 conscience. Her position was not an enviable 
 one. The Palais Royal place-hunters hated her, 
 her political opponents hated her, and the phi- 
 losophers hated her. She seems to have lived 
 through a hail of epigrams, of many of which
 
 Madame de Genlis. 175 
 
 only readers of the Actes des Apolres can con- 
 ceive the obscenity. The wits found out the 
 unfortunate similitude between her favourite in- 
 strument and her critic-lover, and christened her 
 works Les CEuvres de la Harpe. Rivarol de- 
 clared that " she had no sex " " that Heaven 
 had refused the magic of talent to her produc- 
 tions as it had refused the charm of innocence 
 to her childhood." They caricatured her armed 
 with a rod and a stick of barley-sugar, and 
 finally, turning from the preceptress to the 
 pietist, they wrote, 
 
 " Noailles et Sillery, ces meres de I'Eglise, 
 
 Vondraient gagner le par lenient ; 
 Soil qu'on les voie, ou qn'on les Use 
 Par malheur on devient anssitot Protestant.'" 
 
 We do not pretend to admire Madame de 
 Genlis, nor is there evidence to rehabilitate her 
 if one would. Yet, in appending here her por- 
 trait as it has at this time been drawn, it is but 
 fair to remind the reader that it is from the pen 
 of a friend of the Duchess of Chartres, and 
 consequently of an opponent to the countess. 
 " I did not like her," says the Baroness d'Ober- 
 kirch, in her Memoirs, " spite of her accom- 
 plishments and the charm of her conversation ; 
 she was too systematic : she is a woman who 
 
 has laid aside the flowing robes of Her sex for 
 
 -
 
 176 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 the cap and gown " [we permit ourselves to 
 change the term] "of a pedagogue. Besides, 
 nothing about her is natural. She is con- 
 stantly in an attitude, as it were, thinking 
 that her portrait, moral or physical, is being 
 taken. She attaches too much importance to 
 her celebrity she thinks too much of her own 
 opinions. One of the great follies of this mas- 
 culine woman is her harp ; she carries it about 
 with her. She speaks of it when it is not near 
 she plays upon a crust of bread, and practises 
 with a piece of packthread. When she perceives 
 that any one is looking at her, she rounds her 
 arm, pinches up her mouth, assumes a senti- 
 mental look and attitude, and begins to move 
 her fingers." ... At a party at Madame de 
 Massais' she " sat in the centre of the assembly, 
 sang, talked, commanded, commented, and ended 
 by putting the entire concert into confusion. 
 Most certainly the young Princes of Orleans 
 have a most singular Governor, who is ever act- 
 ing the tutor, and who never forgets her role but 
 when she ought most to remember it." Madame 
 la Comtesse has left us no ..portrait of Madame 
 la Baronne. i
 
 Madame de Genii's. 177 
 
 VII. 
 
 MADAME DE GENLIS had long been meditat- 
 ing a descent upon England. Already some 
 years before Gibbon had been charged to pro- 
 cure her lodgings at London. But she had not 
 been able to carry out her intention, and had 
 consoled herself by making the acquaintance of 
 some of our best authors. " I now know Eng- 
 lish perfectly," she informs him, in one of the 
 letters which he apparently never had the civility 
 to answer, and the statement is confirmed by 
 Miss Burney, who tells the king that she ex- 
 pressed herself in the language very readily, and 
 with exceeding ease. " As a proof," she goes 
 on to Gibbon, " I read Shakespeare with the 
 greatest facility ; but my favourite poet is 
 Milton, whom I like so well as to know a con- 
 siderable portion of Paradise Lost by heart. I 
 also know a good many verses of Pope ; but 
 I should make you laugh if you heard me read 
 them." For a Frenchwoman of her time her 
 knowledge of English literature was, in truth, 
 very extensive. With our dramatic authors in 
 particular she seems to have been thoroughly 
 conversant, for she plodded through them all
 
 1/8 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 from Shakespeare and Ben Jonson downwards 
 during her residence at Bury. A propos of our 
 comedies, she told Miss Burney that no woman 
 ought to go and see them ; and, indeed, the 
 calm student of Farquhar's Trip to the Jubilee, 
 or Congreve's Love for Love plays which the 
 prudish Evelinas and Cecilias went to see with 
 their impossible Lord Orvilles can hardly fail 
 to wonder that the rigorous and respectable com- 
 pany were " perpetually out of countenance " at 
 their extreme indelicacy. 
 
 At last, in 1785, she left her pupils at St. Leu, 
 and "in the pleasant month of June" a soft 
 Etesian gale wafted over the illustrious visitor to 
 our hospitable shores. The trip, her record tells 
 us, was " exceedingly brilliant." The public 
 prints teamed with the most obliging notices, 
 and the most complimentary verses, amongst the 
 rest an ode by Hayley. At one of the theatres 
 (she says) Hamlet was performed in her honour; 
 Lord Inchiquin took her to the House of Com- 
 mons. By desire of the Prince of Wales, Lord- 
 William Gordon entertained her at his house, 
 and the " First Gentleman in Europe " " paid 
 great attention " to the illustrious adviser of 
 Philippe Egalitd. Burke invited her to his 
 country seat, and afterwards carried her to 
 Oxford. While with him she made the acquaint-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 179 
 
 ance of the " Chevalier Remolds," as she calls 
 him, who " shifted his trumpet and only took 
 snuff " when the enthusiastic lady talked to him 
 of her art achievements. Here, too, she met 
 Windham, whose published Diary, however, 
 contains nothing very important about her. The 
 queen, to whom she had hitherto forwarded 
 copies of her works, gave her a private audience ; 
 Lord Mansfield, then over eighty years of age, 
 asked permission to visit her, and presented her 
 with a moss-rose tree, which she claims to have first 
 introduced into France. She made an excursion 
 to Blenheim, where the Duchess of Marlborough 
 finding out by the lodge-book how celebrated a 
 lady had left her grounds, sent a servant after 
 her with a present of pine-apples. She offered 
 the man a guinea, which he refused, saying, 
 u Madame, I cannot accept it I am a French- 
 man." Another visit was paid to the son-in-law 
 of Richardson, who (she says) offered her a MS. 
 copy of Pamela, corrected by the author him- 
 self, upon the condition that she would translate 
 it literally, a proposition which she did not con- 
 sider herself to be warranted in making. Mr. 
 Bridget took her to St. Bride's, in the aisle of 
 which his father-in-law lay buried, and told her 
 that the year before a great French lady. Madame 
 du Tessd, had flung herself down upon the stone, 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o Four frenchwomen. 
 
 crying and groaning so terribly as to make her 
 companion fear that she would faint. If any- 
 where in that old churchyard was wandering the 
 spirit of the mild-eyed, half-feminine little printer, 
 it must have felt a well-nigh mortal vanity at such 
 an offering of sentimental tears. 
 
 Horace Walpole has left an account in his 
 correspondence of her appearance at Strawberry 
 Hill. The ingenious virtuoso, who, with a little 
 Attic salt or, rather, for the sake of it would 
 have eaten his dearest friend, had been making 
 very merry in his previous letters over " Rous- 
 seau's hen the schoolmistress, Madame de 
 Genlis " the " moral Madame de Genlis," as 
 he was pleased to style her. His description, 
 however, betrays a greater admiration than 
 might have been anticipated, and as a whole 
 one sidelong sarcasm excepted is certainly in 
 her favour. " Ten days ago,'' he writes to the 
 Countess of Ossory, " Mrs. Cosway sent me a 
 note that Madame desired a ticket for Straw- 
 berry Hill. I thought I could not do less than 
 offer her a breakfast, and named yesterday se'n- 
 night. Then came a message that she must go to 
 Oxford and take her Doctor's degree ; and then 
 another that I should see her yesterday " [July 
 22d, 1785], " when she did arrive, with Miss 
 Wilkes^/John Wilkes's daughter^ " and Pamela,
 
 Madame de Genii's. 181 
 
 whom she did not even present to me, and whom 
 she has educated to be very like herself in the 
 face. I told her I could not attribute the honour 
 of her visit but to my late dear friend, Madame 
 du Deffand. . . . Her person is agreeable, and 
 she seems to have been pretty. Her conversa- 
 tion is natural and reasonable, not prdcieuse and 
 affected, and searching to be eloquent, as I 
 had expected. I asked her if she had been 
 pleased with Oxford, meaning the buildings, not 
 the wretched oafs who inhabit it. She said she 
 had had little time ; that she had wished to learn 
 their plan of education, which, as she said sen- 
 sibly, she supposed was adapted to our Consti- 
 tution. I could have told her that it is exactly 
 repugnant to our Constitution, and that nothing 
 is taught there but drunkenness and prerogative 
 or, in their language, Church and King. I 
 asked her if it is true that the new edition of 
 Voltaire's works is prohibited. She replied, 
 severely, and then condemned those who write 
 against religion and government, which was a 
 little unlucky before her friend Miss Wilkes. 
 She stayed two hours, and returns to France 
 to-day to her duty." 
 
 Madame la Comtesse, consequently, went 
 back to France towards the end of July, after a 
 six weeks' stay six weeks, let us note, very
 
 1 82 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 fully occupied, if we add to the " excursions, 
 visits, and entertainments," a certain amount of 
 time which her indefatigable energy set aside for 
 a tutor in English declamation, and a jeweller 
 who taught her to make ornaments in seed pearl. 
 Her next visit took place in 1791. The event- 
 ful years which occupy the interval are hardly 
 noticed in the Memoirs, which for this period 
 are almost wholly taken up with the account of 
 her rupture with the Duchess of Orleans. The 
 causes are stated obscurely enough. Whether 
 the alleged " difference of opinion " was the 
 real source of disagreement, or whether this was 
 a delicate euphemism for the tardy recognition 
 by the wife of Egalite of a yet deeper and graver 
 wrong, it would be difficult to decide. One 
 thing is clear, and this is the pelican-like self- 
 denial and heartrending forbearance of Madame 
 la Comtesse. Another thing appears certain 
 that whether her influence over the duke was or 
 was not exercised previously to the Revolution, 
 she acquired the reputation of being his adviser, 
 and added to her detractors all his political op- 
 ponents. The duchess tried vainly to oblige 
 her to resign, but the Governor, insisting upon a 
 real or feigned attachment to Mile. d'Orleans, 
 kept her place in spite of everything, until at 
 last her opponent gave up the matter in despair.
 
 Madame de Genlis. 183 
 
 One of the results of this quarrel was the pub- 
 lication of the Lemons d'une Gouvernante, in 
 which she printed an account of the affair, to- 
 gether with extracts of the journals kept of the 
 education of her pupils. This was in August, 
 1791. In the October of the same year permis- 
 sion was at last given by the Duke of Orleans, 
 and the ill-health of Mademoiselle serving as a 
 pretext, they (Pamela, Henrietta Sercey, the 
 countess, and her charge) crossed to England to 
 take the Bath waters. After two months spent 
 at that place, where, despite our disreputable 
 comedies, they sedulouslyfrequented the theatre, 
 they removed to Bury St. Edmunds, where they 
 lived for several months in comparative retire- 
 ment, only making occasional excursions to 
 different parts of the country. At Bury they 
 became acquainted with Mr. Howard, after- 
 wards Duke of Norfolk, Mr. Hervey, after- 
 wards Lord Bristol, and saw something of the 
 famous agriculturist, Arthur Young. They were 
 visited by Windham, Swinburne, Fox, and 
 Sheridan, the latter having, possibly, some sub- 
 ordinate intention of flirting with Pamela, whom 
 he undoubtedly admired, although, Mr. Moore 
 infers, it is improbable that he offered to marry 
 her, as Madame de Genlis would have us to be- 
 lieve. Besides, it was only during her stay at
 
 1 84 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 Bury that he had lost Mrs. Sheridan, to whom 
 he was greatly attached. 
 
 Miss Burney has given us a little glimpse of 
 the Bury life. When she had first made the ac- 
 quaintance of Madame de Genlis, in 178$, she 
 had been greatly prepossessed in her favour. 
 She is " the sweetest and most accomplished 
 Frenchwoman that she ever met with." . . . 
 " I saw her at first with a prejudice in her dis- 
 favour from the cruel reports I had heard, but 
 the moment I looked at her it was removed. 
 There was a dignity with her sweetness, and a 
 frankness with her modesty, that convinced me 
 beyond all power of report of her real worth and 
 innocence." And, indeed, she seems to have had 
 all through a kind of liking for her, although she 
 acted in opposition to her oft-repeated convic- 
 tion, and allowed the " cruel reports" to awe 
 her into keeping aloof from the "fascinating 
 allurements " of the lady who was so anxious to 
 correspond with " cette chbre Miss Beurni." 
 The Royalists with whom England was swarm- 
 ing men like the Due de Liancourt, who 
 spoke, "with eyes of fire," of this " coquine 
 de Brulart," who " adored the Duchess of Or- 
 leans," and would have caned her husband in 
 the streets, as the prime cause of his country's 
 misery were not likely to prejudice any one
 
 Madame de Genlis. 185 
 
 in favour of the clever " intrigante " who, as 
 they believed, had helped to mislead him. But 
 Miss Burney expresses herself with such a mys- 
 terious and pious horror of Madame Brulart 
 that we sincerely wish she had cited something 
 a little more shocking than the following : 
 
 '' They " [Arthur Young's wife and daughter] 
 " give a very unpleasant account of Madame de 
 Genlis, or De Sillery, or Brulart, as she is now 
 called. They say she has established herself at 
 Bury, in their neighbourhood, with Mile, la 
 Princesse d'Orleans and Pamela, and a Circe " 
 [Henrietta Sercey], " another young girl under 
 her care. They have taken a house, the master 
 of which always dines with them, though Mrs. 
 Young says he is such a low man he should not 
 dine with her daughter. They form twenty with 
 themselves and household. They keep a botanist, 
 a chemist, and a natural historian always with 
 them. These are supposed to have been common 
 servants of the Duke of Orleans in former days, 
 as they always walk behind the ladies when 
 abroad ; but, to make amends in the new equal- 
 ising style, they all dine together at home. They 
 visit at no house but Sir Thomas Gage's, where 
 they carry their harps, and frequently have music. 
 They have been to a Bury ball, and danced all 
 night ; Mile. d'Orleans with anybody, known or
 
 1 86 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 unknown to Madame Brulart." All this may 
 sound very dreadful to the starched little Tory 
 who had given up her literary fame for the 
 melancholy monotony and niggard favours of 
 the court of Queen Charlotte, yet it scarcely 
 deserves to be termed a " woful change from 
 that elegant, amiable, high-bred Madame de 
 Genlis" of six years past, " the apparent pattern 
 of female perfection in manners, conversation, 
 and delicacy." 
 
 After the September massacres Madame de 
 Genlis received a letter from the Duke of Or- 
 leans, bidding her to return to France with her 
 charge. She refused to do so, considering it 
 unreasonable to expect her to come back at such 
 an unsettled period. Her position was exceed- 
 ingly embarrassing, and her active imagination 
 added greatly to the terrors of the situation. 
 " I am uneasy, sick, unhappy," she writes to 
 Sheridan from Bury, in the "bad language" 
 for which she apologises; "surrounded by the 
 most dreadful snares of the fraud and wicked- 
 ness" "intrusted with the most interesting 
 and sacred charge." In the commencement of 
 the month of November the duke sent an emis- 
 sary charged to bring away his daughter, if her 
 instructress refused to return with her. This, 
 acting upon Sheridan's advice, she decided to
 
 Madame de Genlis. 187 
 
 do. They set out upon their perilous journey 
 in October, 1792. The fervid fancy of the 
 countess had peopled the " antres vast and 
 deserts idle " that lay between London and 
 Dover with innumerable poniards aimed at the 
 existence of her illustrious protdgde. Mr. Sheri- 
 dan's propensity for practical joking, added to 
 the opportune recollection of an incident in Gold- 
 smith's She Stoops to Conquer, did not allow her 
 to be disappointed of her romantic terrors. 
 
 They went off in two carriages, with a foot- 
 man, hired for the occasion, and a French 
 lacquey. The remainder of the servants had 
 returned to Paris. After having gone about a 
 mile the Frenchman begins to think that they 
 are not in the right road, a suspicion which he 
 easily communicates to his mistress. The post- 
 boys, being examined, answer evasively more 
 suspicions! This is decidedly worse "than 
 crossing the desert plains of Newmarket," which 
 had filled her with such terrible anticipations a day 
 or two before. However, on they go for three- 
 quarters of an hour more, passing quickly through 
 an utterly unknown, or seemingly unknown, 
 tract of country. The post-boys and hired foot- 
 man, again applied to, again reply evasively. 
 More rapidly than ever they pursue their un- 
 certain route, the post-boys answering all ques-
 
 1 88 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 tions laconically, unwillingly, mysteriously, and 
 appearing most unaccountably afraid to come to 
 a stop. At last they confess to the remarkable 
 fact that they have "lost their way" between 
 London and Dover, but that they are now well 
 on the road to their next stage, which is Dart- 
 ford. This is a relief; but as the journey still 
 continues for an hour at least, the countess in- 
 sists, notwithstanding all the objections of the 
 incomprehensible post-boys, upon stopping at a 
 village to inquire where she is. " About twenty- 
 two miles from Dartford," they obligingly inform 
 her. Thereupon, the post-boys resisting to the 
 last, she goes back to London forthwith, finding 
 herself, strange to say, at an easy and convenient 
 distance from this her starting-place. 
 
 No clue is given to this highly romantic ex- 
 pedition & la Mrs. Hardcastle. " I merely re- 
 late the facts without explanation, or the addition 
 of any reflections of my own, as the impartial 
 reader can make them for himself." But when 
 we remember the shameful trick that the " First 
 Gentleman in Europe" played upon the old Duke 
 of Norfolk at the Pavilion on the Steyne when 
 we recall the mishaps of Madame Duval, as re- 
 corded in Evelina and above all, when we 
 learn that the result of this journey from London 
 to London was to cause the detention of the
 
 Madame de Genlis. 189 
 
 whole party at Sheridan's country house for a 
 month, and consider, too, his prompt hushing- 
 up of the whole affair, it is hardly possible not 
 to agree with his biographer that the trick was 
 of his contriving. At any rate, with him, at 
 Isleworth they remained until the end of No- 
 vember, when their host accompanied them to 
 Dover. 
 
 They arrived at Paris only to discover that, 
 as she had failed to return earlier, Mile. d'Or- 
 leans was then, by the recent law, included 
 among the tmigrds. No course was open to 
 Madame de Genlis but to act in accordance 
 with the duke's desire, and carry her pupil to a 
 neutral country until such time as she should be 
 excepted from the list. A day or two before 
 their departure for the place chosen] Tournay 
 her husband, now M. de Sillery, took them 
 to see Lodoiska at one of the theatres. It was 
 here that Lord Edward Fitzgerald (who had 
 hitherto, from a dread of learned ladies, studi- 
 ously kept aloof from Madame la Comtesse) 
 saw Pamela for the first time. She is said to 
 have borne a singular resemblance to Mrs. 
 Sheridan, whom he had greatly admired, and 
 who, indeed, according to Moore's Life, had 
 even expressed a wish that after her death he 
 should marry this very girl, whose beauty and
 
 190 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 resemblance to herself, her husband, fresh from 
 some recent excursion to Bury, had been enthu- 
 siastically describing. Lord Edward fell in love 
 on the spot, made an immediate acquaintance, 
 and following them to Tournay, proposed, was 
 accepted, and there married at the end of De- 
 cember to the ciloyenne Anne Caroline Stephanie 
 Syms, otherwise Pamela, born at Fogo [}~\ in 
 Newfoundland, daughter of Guillaumede Brixey 
 and Mary Syms, in the presence of, and assisted 
 by, the citoyenn.es Brulart-Sillery and Adele 
 Egalite, the citoyens Philippe Egalite and Louis 
 Philippe Egalite, General O'Moran, and others. 
 Despite this circumstantial fiction (which 
 courtesy requires us to preserve), loquacious 
 Rumour persists in assigning a very different 
 parentage to " the dear little, pale, pretty wife," 
 as he calls her, of the ill-fated Fitzgerald. And. 
 unless we are mistaken, Rumour is supported by 
 these words from one of his letters to his mother, 
 the Duchess of Leinster, in January, 1794: 
 " My dear little wife has, upon the whole, 
 been cheerful and amused, which, of course, 
 pleases me. I never have received an answer 
 from her mother, so that Pamela is still ignorant 
 of what has happened." There is but one per- 
 son to whom the title can allude, and amongst 
 other things that had recently happened .was the
 
 Madame de Genii's. 191 
 
 death, in November, 1795, of one of the most 
 illustrious witnesses of the Tournay marriage, 
 the sometime Duke of Orleans Philippe 
 Hyalite. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IN January, 1794, when the last-mentioned 
 letter was written, Madame de Genlis had found 
 a resting-place in the convent of St. Claire, at 
 Bremgarten, in Switzerland. Mile. d'Orleans 
 was still with her. No one had arrived to re- 
 lieve the ex-governor of a charge who, we are 
 inclined to fancy, had ceased to be as " interest- 
 ing" and "sacred" as of yore. Then came 
 the king's death and the declaration of war. 
 " We could not remain at Tournay," writes 
 Mademoiselle, " as the Austrians were about to 
 enter it ; and could not return to France, as a 
 law forbade us to do so, upon pain of death ; 
 M. Dumouriez offered us an asylum in his camp. 
 We set out with his army, and stopped in the 
 town of St. Amand, while he remained at the 
 mineral springs, a quarter of a league distant." 
 But a revolt broke out in the camp, and Madame 
 de Genlis, yielding to the wish of the Duke de 
 Chartres. fled in haste to Mons with his sister. 
 Thence passing to Switzerland, they found sane-
 
 192 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 tuary at Bremgarten, there to remain until at 
 last, in May, 1794, Mademoiselle was received 
 by her aunt, the Princess de Conti, who was 
 living at Friburg. Meanwhile her brave young 
 brother, after fighting his way out from the camp 
 of Dumouriez, had quietly settled down to teach 
 mathematics in a college of the Grisons under 
 the pseudonym of Corby. 
 
 The next halt of the countess was made at 
 Altona, where, amongst other things, she gained 
 her livelihood by painting patterns for a cloth 
 manufactory. Her husband had voted against 
 the death of the king, and had been guillotined 
 in 1795 with the Girondins. The sole proidgde 
 who remained to her now was Henrietta Sercey, 
 whom she had left at Utrecht under the protec- 
 tion of a foreign lady. At Altona she lived at 
 an inn called " Flock's," the master of which 
 was well affected to the Revolution, and where 
 she was known by the name of " Miss Clarke." 
 During all this time (she says) it was commonly 
 supposed that she was living with Dumouriez ; 
 in fact, it was often asserted in her presence at 
 the table d'hdle, and, besides, industriously cir- 
 culated by all the dmigrds, who still persisted in 
 regarding her as " one of the principal authors 
 of the Revolution." Her slight connection with 
 the general (and she insists that it was slight)
 
 Madame de Genlis. 193 
 
 had added to her enemies all the patriots who 
 hated him for his treason. She managed, how- 
 ever, to live here nine months undiscovered, 
 spending her days with the inevitable harp, her 
 paint-box, and her ink-bottle, not omitting, be- 
 sides, to diversify them with waltzes and games 
 in the rooms of a neighbouring Madame Gudin, 
 and even finding time to inspire the admiration 
 of a middle-aged baker, who made her a pro- 
 posal. While here she learned the death, on 
 the memorable 28th of July, 1794, of Maximilian 
 Robespierre, and the termination of the Terror. 
 " I was greatly surprised at hearing loud and 
 repeated knocks at my door" [itwas one o'clock 
 in the morning], " and was still more so when 
 I recognised the voice of my peaceful neighbour, 
 M. de Kercy " [a Frenchman and patriot who 
 lived in the house]. " He cried out to me, 
 ' Ouvre^ ! ouvre\ I ilfaut que je vous embrasse ! ' 
 As I did not yield to this singular request, he 
 cried out all the more, ' It is you who will want 
 to embrace me yourself open, open 1 ' and at 
 last I obeyed. M. de Kercy sprang towards 
 me, crying, ' The tyrant is gone at last, Robes- 
 pierre is dead ! ' and, to tell the truth, I imme- 
 diately hugged him with all my heart. Next day 
 we learned that the news of his death had pro- 
 duced quite a contrary effect on one of the most 
 
 o
 
 194 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 violent of his partisans and there were many 
 in Holstein. One of these profound politicians 
 was struck with such sorrow on hearing of his 
 tragical end, that he instantly fell dead upon 
 the spot." 
 
 In 1795 she left Altona and went to Hamburg. 
 At "Flock's" she had written Les Chevaliers 
 du Cygne, a tale of the court of Charlemagne, 
 which she now sold ; and during her stay at 
 Hamburg she composed the Precis de ma con- 
 duite pendant la Revolution, which (she asserts) 
 produced a powerful effect in her favour through- 
 out Germany, although it does not appear that 
 the stories which were told about her lost, in 
 consequence, either narrators or listeners. 
 "Whilst at this place she parted with Henrietta 
 Sercey, who was married to a M. Matthiessen, 
 the son of a wealthy merchant. After the mar- 
 riage Madame la Comtesse set out for Berlin, 
 where we next find her domesticated with a 
 Mademoiselle Bocquet, who kept a boarding- 
 school in that city, and who i( had received her 
 with open arms." With her new admirer's aid 
 she found a publisher for an already commenced 
 novel, Les Voeux Te'me'raires ; but no sooner 
 was this done than, by the influence of the emi- 
 grants, the king was induced to believe that she 
 was a most dangerous character, and in conse-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 195 
 
 quence forbade her to remain in his dominions. 
 " He would not banish her from his library," he 
 is reported to have said, " but she must quit his 
 territories." Her spirits, however, did not de- 
 sert her. She shook the dust from her feet at 
 the frontier with the following verses. The 
 poor German officer who served as her escort, 
 had been charged to obtain from her a written 
 promise that she would not return to Prussia ; 
 she gave him these, which he took with the 
 greatest simplicity : 
 
 " Malgrl man gout pour les voyages, 
 Je promets, avec grand plaisir, 
 D'hjiter, et rnQme de fuir 
 Ce royaume dont les usages 
 N^invitent pas & revenir." 
 
 But she did not keep her promise. After an 
 intervening period spent between Hamburg and 
 Brevel she returned to Berlin. The king was 
 dead ; his successor had no objection to her 
 either upon his shelves or elsewhere, and Mile. 
 Bocquet's arms were as open as before. The 
 curious antipathy felt to her by the emigrants is 
 very ungallantly evidenced in the succeeding 
 extract : 
 
 " My parlour had two doors, one opening 
 into my room, the other upon a private staircase 
 that led into the court, so that I had two ways 
 
 o 2
 
 196 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 of getting out. Upon the landing-place was a 
 door, facing mine, and leading to the room of 
 an emlgri who, Mademoiselle Bocquet told me. 
 was of a very solitary temper, and knew no one 
 in the house. I had received a present of tv/o 
 pots of fine hyacinths. As I dread the smell of 
 flowers at night, and wished to leave my parlour- 
 door open for the sake of fresh air, I took it 
 into my head to put them out on the landing- 
 place, between my neighbour's door and my 
 own. The next morning I went to take in the 
 flowers, and was disagreeably surprised at see- 
 ing my beautiful hyacinths cut into little pieces 
 and scattered round the pots. I could easily 
 guess that my emigrant neighbour was the author 
 of this deed, which doubtless, in spite of French 
 gallantry, the libels published against me had 
 induced him to commit. As I did not wish to 
 tell the incident that had occurred, I did not ask 
 for any more hyacinths from those who had 
 given me the others ; but I told a servant to buy 
 me some. She could not find any ; but she 
 brought me some other flowers with which I 
 filled one of the pots, and pasted on it a slip of 
 paper, upon which I wrote these words : ' Tec,r 
 up my works if you will, but respect those of 
 God.' In the evening before going to bed I put 
 the pot upon the landing-place, and upon waking
 
 Madame de Genii's. 197 
 
 the next morning was very curious to ascertain 
 the fate of my flowers. I got up immediately 
 to go and look, and found to my delight that the 
 stranger had been satisfied with watering them. 
 I immediately carried them into the parlour, and 
 in placing them upon a table I perceived hanging 
 from two of the flowers, two green threads, each 
 bearing a beautiful little cornelian ring. The 
 emigrant had been desirous of repairing the 
 wrong he had done, and evidently knew that at 
 this time I was forming a collection of cornelian 
 trinkets ; I had rings of cornelian, seals, hearts, 
 little boxes, and the like. All my resentment 
 vanished at this proceeding. The most singu- 
 lar thing was, that the Emigre" stopped at that, 
 never wrote to me, did not ask to see me, and 
 sent me no message. I imitated his discretion, 
 and this was the first and last time we ever had 
 anything to do with each other." 
 
 With this closes volume four of the Memoirs, 
 which henceforward decrease greatly in interest. 
 Nothing but the vow of poverty which she had 
 made in exile can excuse such an excessive prod- 
 igality of souvenirs, Madame la Comtesse is 
 far too kind. De omnibus rebus was just endur- 
 able ; de quibusdam aliis is more than we can 
 bear. Endless extracts from her own works, 
 copious cuttings from the works of other people,
 
 198 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 spiteful little scratches at shining reputations, de- 
 tails of petty quarrels, " miseres du monde par- 
 leur, du monde scribe;'" rambling discussions ' & 
 propos de bottes," and rare digressions to an 
 eventless biography these are the farrago of 
 the remaining volumes, not luminous now, but 
 voluminous, not fluent, but superfluous. The 
 material, in fact, is mainly what, in the earlier 
 portion, the prudent reader skipped or slumbered 
 over and life is too short for such interminable 
 and irrelevant loquacity. 
 
 We shall take the liberty, therefore, of com- 
 pressing into a few brief sentences the more 
 material occurrences of the long period which 
 lies between us and her death, contenting our- 
 selves, for the rest, with the reproduction of 
 such extracts as we have been able to glean from 
 the records of her contemporaries. The friend- 
 ship with Mile. Bocquet having terminated in 
 a quarrel, she remained at Berlin, supporting 
 herself by writing, making trinkets, and taking 
 pupils, until she was recalled to France under 
 the Consulate. She came to Paris, bringing with 
 her a child she had adopted in Prussia, Casimir 
 Baecker, afterwards a celebrated harp-player, 
 whose attachment to his benefactress must have 
 been a considerable solace to the pupilless old 
 lady. She was without personal property, and
 
 Madame de Genlis. 199 
 
 had consequently but little to receive. Mara- 
 dan, the bookseller, engaged her to write novels 
 for a certain salary, and she published during the 
 first years of the century her most perfect and 
 popular works. From Napoleon she received 
 a pension and rooms in the Arsenal. For this 
 she was to write fortnightly letters to him upon 
 general subjects copious excerpts from which 
 adorn the pages of the Memoirs. Other small 
 pensions sufficed to place her beyond the reach 
 of want although she was never rich. Her 
 energy, activity, and taste for writing continued 
 unabated, until at last, one New Year's Day, a 
 journalistic pen, preoccupied above all with the 
 desire of being brilliant, recorded her death in 
 the following words : " Madame de Genlis a 
 cessd ecrire ; c'est annoncer sa mort," 
 
 Her society, we are informed by Madame h 
 Comtesse de Bradi, a lady who knew her for 
 the last thirty years of her life, was greatly 
 sought after, but she made no effort to retain 
 more than a small coterie of admirers. Upon the 
 return of the Bourbons she lost the imperial 
 assistance, but the Orleans family gave her the 
 customary allowances as a quondam Gouverneur 
 and Gouvernante. Faithful, however, to the 
 vow of poverty which she had made at St. 
 Amand, she gave away all that she possessed to
 
 2oo Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 those about her. " Money from her pensions, 
 presents from her pupils or her friends, every- 
 thing was distributed as soon as received," and 
 when she died a few worn and homely articles 
 of furniture were all she left behind her. 
 
 In 1816 she was visited at Paris by that " wild 
 Irish girl " who now sleeps calmly enough in the 
 Brompton Cemetery below her shattered and 
 stringless harp Sydney, Lady Morgan. That 
 lady was then writing those very volumes of 
 France which so roused the malevolence of Mr. 
 Croker against their witty Whig authoress. ' ' Elle 
 s'est jette dans la religion," " she has shut her- 
 self up in a convent of Capucines," the gossips 
 told her, when she inquired for the famous 
 old countess. " It is impossible to see her, for 
 she is invisible alike to friends and strangers." 
 Nevertheless, Lady Morgan, to her delight, 
 received an invitation to the Convent of Carme- 
 lites, in the Rue de Vaugirard, where Madame 
 de Genlis was then domesticated. She found 
 her in an " apartment that might have answered 
 equally for the oratory of a saint or the boudoir 
 of a coquette." Books lay scattered upon the 
 table a strange mixture of the sacred and pro- 
 fane ; a great crucifix hung forward over the 
 elegant Grecian couch of the Empire ; chaplets 
 and rosaries contended with her lute and her
 
 Madame de Genii's. 201 
 
 paintings upon the wall with blue silk draper- 
 ies, white vases, and freshly-gathered flowers. 
 
 She was now seventy, but time had used her 
 tenderly. An accident, indeed, had slightly 
 injured the nose & la Roxalane which had been 
 " so much celebrated in prose and verse, and 
 which " to use her own expression " she 
 had hitherto preserved intact in all its delicacy." 
 The beautiful hands and feet that Madame de 
 Bradi praises were, we presume, as beautiful as 
 ever ; the eyes were still full of life and expres- 
 sion ; but the delicate features were worn and 
 sharply marked, and the brilliant complexion 
 which had been her greatest beauty had waned 
 and faded. Yet " infirmity seemed to have 
 spared the slight and emaciated figure," and be- 
 yond these " the traces of age were neither deep 
 nor multiplied." She received her visitor " with 
 a kindness and cordiality that had all the naivett 
 and freshness of youthful feeling and youthful 
 vivacity. There was nothing of age in her ad- 
 dress or conversation," says Lady Morgan, "and 
 vigour, animation, a tone of decision, a rapidity 
 of utterance spoke the full possession of every 
 feeling and every faculty ; and I found her in 
 the midst of occupations and pursuits which 
 might startle the industry of youth to undertake 
 or to accomplish."
 
 2O2 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 " When I entered her apartment she was 
 painting flowers in a book, which she called her 
 ' herbier sacre",' in which she was copying all the 
 plants mentioned in the Bible. She showed me 
 another volume, which she had just finished, full 
 of trophies and tasteful devices, which she called 
 ' Vherbier de reconnaissance.'' ' But I have but 
 little time for such idle amusements,' said she. 
 She was, in fact, then engaged in abridging some 
 ponderous tomes of French me'moires " [probably 
 those of the Marquis de Dangeau], " in writing 
 her Journal de laJeunesse, and -in preparing for 
 the press her new novel, Les Battue'cas, which 
 has since " [in 1817] "been given to the world." 
 
 " Her harp was nevertheless well strung and 
 tuned, her pianoforte covered with new music, 
 and when I gave her her lute, to play for me, it 
 did not require the drawing up of a single string. 
 All was energy and occupation. It was impos- 
 sible not to make some observation on such ver- 
 satility of talent and variety of pursuits. ' Oh, 
 this is nothing,' said Madame de Genlis, ' what 
 I pride myself on is knowing twenty trades, by 
 all of which I could earn my bread.' " 
 
 M. Barriere saw her in 1823, or two years 
 before the publication of the Memoirs. The 
 story is the same. She is still the " little lively 
 old woman" of Moore. This time the sur-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 203 
 
 foundings are hardly as elegant the apartments 
 a middling first-floor in the Place Royale. She 
 was seated at a common deal table heaped with 
 a pell-mell of articles from the breakfast and 
 toilet table, the studio, the library, and the 
 workshop a miscellaneous olla-podrida, from 
 which her visitor does not fail to draw its moral. 
 Nevertheless, she did the honours of her hermit- 
 age " with the tone, the ease, the perfect amia- 
 bility of a femme du grande monde." She 
 praised the young lady visitor whom he had 
 brought with him. She reminded her of her own 
 youth, she said. " They will tell you," said the 
 old countess, " that I was beautiful very 
 beautiful ; don't believe them, it is not true 
 mais j'ttais excessivement jolie ! " 
 
 The last account which we shall cite (com- 
 pleting our claim to that first excellence of the 
 biographer's art the will to stand aside when 
 better voices speak) is Mrs. Opie. The date 
 is 1830. The Quaker authoress and painter's 
 wife was staying at Paris. Her friend M. 
 Moreau had invited the old countess to dine 
 with him, and they went together to call upon 
 and fetch her. " She received me kindly," says 
 Mrs. Opie, " and I, throwing myself on my 
 feelings, and remembering how much I owed 
 her in the days of my childhood, became enthu-
 
 2O4 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 siastically drawn towards her very soon. She 
 is a really pretty old woman of eighty-seven " 
 [eighty-four], " very uneffected, with nothing of 
 smartness, or affected state or style, about her. 
 We passed through her bedroom (in which hung 
 a crucifix) to her salon, where she sat, much 
 muffled up, over her wood fire ; she had dined 
 at three o'clock, not expecting to be able to go 
 out, but, as the weather was fine, she soon con- 
 sented to accompany us, but she laughing said 
 she must now go without ' sa belle robe.' We 
 said in any gown she would be welcome ; she 
 then put on a very pretty white silk bonnet and 
 a clean frill, and we set off. ..." 
 
 The old countess said little at dinner, but 
 nothing was lost upon her. There was a dis- 
 tinguished party present, who drank her health 
 after a most flattering speech from their host. 
 " I thought Madame de G. conducted herself 
 on this occasion with much simple dignity ; yet 
 it was a proud moment for her. She murmured 
 something (and looked at me) about wishing the 
 health of Madame Opie to be drunk, but no one 
 heard her but myself" [she was seated next her], 
 " and I was really glad. When we rose from 
 table, most of the gentlemen accompanied 
 us. The room now filled with French, English, 
 and Americans ; many were presented to the
 
 Madame de Genlis. 205 
 
 venerable countess, next to whom I sat, and 
 then to me ; she seemed to enjoy a scene to 
 which for some time she had been a stranger. 
 I found, while I was conversing on some inter- 
 esting subjects, she had been observing me. 
 Afterwards she said ' Je vous aime ! ' she then 
 added, with an archness of countenance and 
 vivacity of manner, the remnant of her best days, 
 ' je vous sme ' (imitating the bad pronunciation 
 of some foreigner). At half-past ten I saw C. 
 Moreau lead Madame de G. out, and I followed 
 them, and paid her every attention in my power, 
 for which she was grateful ; when I had wrap- 
 ped her up and put on her bonnet for her, my 
 servant got a coach, and C. ML, another gentle- 
 man, and myself conducted her home." This 
 was on the 22d of November, 1830. On the 
 3ist of December following the long life ended, 
 and going to her in the morning, they found her 
 dead in her bed. 
 
 We have now reached the term of a paper 
 which has far exceeded its intended limits, but 
 which, nevertheless, makes no kind of pretension 
 to exhaustiveness. " La Comtesse de Genlis 
 dtvoitte " to use the Abbe Mariotini's title 
 is still to be written. Much that has been said to 
 her discredit bears so plainly the impress of per- 
 sonal or political animosity is so manifestly
 
 206 Four Frenchwomen. 
 
 hostile and ill-natured, that any one, working 
 upon the neutral ground of unbiassed biography, 
 might safely hope to vindicate her from a great 
 deal that has been urged against her. Unfortu- 
 nately, Report is thousand-tongued, and her 
 enemies were many ; the records of her friends 
 are few, their evidence meagre, and she has not 
 mended the matter by the publication of her vo- 
 luminous memoirs. Such a cloud of insincerity 
 broods over her seemingly outspoken pages, 
 such a crafty caution lurks behind her candour, 
 she depreciates so insidiously, so disingenuously 
 commends her friends and admirers, that one 
 grows gradually to " believe herself against her- 
 self," to disallow her claim to clemency, to dis- 
 regard her verities, and to doubt her pious 
 protestations. Yet we should be far from styl- 
 ing her (as did a friend who looked over the 
 memoirs) a " Josephine Surface." She is 
 more histrion than hypocrite. The glare of the 
 St. Aubin footlights never quite faded from 
 her face ; at no moment of her life was she 
 utterly unconscious of the dress-circle and the 
 stalls. Always upon a stage, the actress and the 
 woman are so subtly intermingled, that it is 
 difficult to tell which is uppermost harder to 
 separate the one from the other. Considering her 
 in her different parts as Comedian and School-
 
 Madame de Genlis. 207 
 
 mistress, Prude, Pietist, and Politician we 
 are inclined to admire her most en Pedagogue. 
 It is as the " Governor of Belle Chasse " that 
 she will hold her place in the repertoire. Of 
 her life, perhaps the last acts are the best. For 
 the sake of those for whom, like Mrs. Opie and 
 Lady Morgan, she is inseparably connected with 
 the early associations of education, we willingly 
 remember her indefatigable industry and untiring 
 energy, her kindness to her relations and admir- 
 ers, her courage and patience in exile and pov- 
 erty. She had great talents, great perseverance, 
 and a rare facility ; less ambitious of social suc- 
 cesses, less satisfied with contemporary praises, 
 poorer and less prominently placed, she might 
 have left an enduring name, or at least deserved 
 a better epitaph than that of " Tou jours bien et 
 jamais mieux," with which Madame Guizot once 
 cleverly characterised her productions. 
 
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