Society of the Palais Royal—Philippe-égalité—An Apparition—Mlle. Mars—M. Ducrest—Marriage of Mme. de Montesson—Marly—The Prime Minister of France.
Capital letter T

THE society of the Palais Royal was at that time the most brilliant and witty in Paris, and she soon became quite at home there. The Comtesse de Blot, lady of honour to the Duchesse de Chartres, was pleasant enough when she was not trying to pose as a learned woman, at which times her long dissertations were tiresome and absurd; she was also ambitious, and what was worse, avaricious.

Mme. de Clermont had been married at fifteen to the Comte de Choisi, who was much older than herself, and of whom she was dreadfully afraid; but he was killed at the battle of Minden, and she had just married the Comte de Clermont, who was deeply in love with her. She was young, pretty, very capricious, and a friend of Mme. de Montesson, and with all her faults never dull or tiresome, but full of merry talk and amusing stories; the Comtesse de Polignac and the Marquise de Barbantour were also among the ladies of the household [387] with whom Félicité was now associated; two much older ones were the Comtesses de Rochambault and de Montauban.

The Duchesse de Chartres, née Mlle. de Penthièvre, was an angel of goodness and kindness. She had conceived so violent a passion for the Duc de Chartres, when she had met him for the first time, that she declared she would either marry him or take the veil. It was a most unfortunate choice to have been made, especially by so saintly a personage, for the court and society of Louis XV. did not include a more corrupt and contemptible character than the notorious Philippe-égalité.

The attraction he felt for Mme. de Genlis, which had such a powerful influence upon her life and so disastrous an effect upon her reputation, had not begun when she first took up her abode at the Palais Royal.

It was said by his illegitimate brothers, MM. de Saint-Far and Saint-Albin, to have begun on a certain evening when a quadrille arranged by Mme. de Genlis, in which each couple represented proverbs, went to the Opera ball, as the custom of those days permitted, and was suddenly disarranged by an enormous cat, which, mewing and clawing, rolled itself suddenly into the midst of the dancers. The cat proved to be a little Savoyard boy, dressed up in fur, dreadfully frightened at the abuse and kicks he received.

This elegant trick was traced to the Duc de Chartres and his friends; and the good temper and general demeanour of Mme. de Genlis on this provoking occasion struck the Duke with [388] admiration and compunction. Philippe-égalité, contemptible as his disposition undoubtedly was, had also been very badly brought up, and when he was fifteen his father had given him a mistress who was afterwards notorious as Mlle. Duthé; he was always surrounded with a group of the fastest young men at court, the Chevalier de Coigny, MM. de Fitz-James, de Conflans, &c.

“The social existence of Mme. de Genlis,” writes Mme. d’Abrantès, [115] “is always a problem difficult to resolve; it is composed of a mass of contradictions, one more extraordinary than the other. Of a noble family, whose name and alliances gave her the right to be chanoinesse of the Chapter of Alix, she was called until her marriage Comtesse de Lancy. She married M. de Genlis, a man of high rank, nearly related to most of the great families in the kingdom, and yet Mme. de Genlis had never in society the attitude of a grande dame.... The important part this woman played in the destinies of France is of such a nature that one must notice it, more especially as she denies a mass of facts, the most notorious of the time in which her name is mixed up, ... pretending never to have spoken to men of whom she must not only have been an acquaintance but a friend. Long before the first outbursts of the Revolution, Mme. de Genlis helped to prepare the influence which afterwards burst like an accursed bomb, covering with its splinters even the woman who had prepared the wick and perhaps lighted the match.
 
“It was an eccentric existence that she led in her youth, it must be confessed. That wandering, restless life had a character all the more strange because at that time it was so unusual; going perpetually from one chateau to another, roaming about the country disguised as a peasant, playing tricks on everybody, eating raw fish, playing the harp like Apollo, dancing, acting, fencing....”

And now she was dame pour accompagner to the Duchesse de Chartres, and her influence was soon felt in the society of the Palais Royal.

On the nights when there was an opera, the Palais Royal was open to any one who had been presented there. The first invitation to supper meant a standing one for those days, therefore the Palais Royal was then crowded with guests; and on other evenings the petits soupers, generally consisting of eighteen or twenty guests, were composed of those of the intimate society of the Duke and Duchess, who also had a general invitation.

The Duchesse de Chartres continued for a long time very fond of Mme. de Genlis, who was exceedingly attractive, not only because of her beauty, talents, and accomplishments, but because she was so interesting and amusing that it was impossible to be dull in her company. And though she had many faults she had also many excellent qualities. She was very affectionate and kind to those for whom she really cared, she was charitable, good tempered, and courageous; her reputation so far was good, and her respect for religion made her shun the atheistical philosophic set whose opinions on those points she detested. One friend she had [390] among them, the Comte de Schomberg, was an exception to this rule. He was a friend of Voltaire, and a pronounced atheist, but it was an understood thing that no religious subject should be discussed between them, and no word of impiety spoken in her presence. The events of the Revolution converted M. de Schomberg, and he died some years after it an ardent Christian.

Many of these disbelievers in Christianity were terribly afraid of ghosts. “Je n’y crois pas, mais je les redoute,” as somebody once remarked.

She made one or two journeys to Holland and Belgium when she wished for a change, but in 1775 a terrible grief overtook her, in the death of her son, now five years old. The children were living near, and her mother was then with them when she herself caught measles, and as often happens when they are taken later in life than is usual, she was extremely ill, and it was impossible to tell her that her children had the same complaint.
E. H. Bearne
AMSTERDAM

M. de Genlis, who had also a post at the Palais Royal, was nursing her, and her mother came every day to see her.

The child died at five o’clock one morning. “At the same hour,” she writes, “of the same day, I was alone with my nurse, and, raising my eyes to the canopy of my bed, I distinctly saw my son in the form of an angel ... holding out his arms to me. This vision, without exciting any suspicions, caused me great surprise. I rubbed my eyes several times, but always saw the same figure. My mother and M. de Genlis came at about eleven; they were overcome with grief, but I was not surprised, for I [391] knew I was ill enough to make them very anxious. I could not help looking always at the canopy of my bed with a sort of shudder, and my mother, knowing that I was afraid of spiders, asked if I saw one ... at last I said I would not tell them what I saw lest they should think my brain was deranged, but they pressed me until I told them.”

They concealed the calamity for five weeks, and then brought her a miniature of the child as an angel.

Félicité recovered, and went to Spa, and to travel in Belgium. After her return, as she was walking one day in the Palais Royal gardens, she met a young girl with a woman of seven or eight and thirty, who stopped and gazed at her ............