So Boscovich has sung, but now ’tis plain,
That fear of war and love of money reign.
There was something so natural and good natured in his manner it was impossible not to like him. On his first visit to us, as he was going away he mistook the door, and opened that of an inner room. Finding his mistake, he said to my mother, “No doubt you have heard that the Jesuits are capable of all that is bad, but do not think I was going to commit a robbery.”[[18]] He composed an extempore distich in verse, and I am sorry I did not ask him to write it down.
His place at Paris was “Inspecteur de l’Optique de la Marine,” a place created for him by his friend M. de Vergennes, then Prime Minister. He lived there in the best society, and was generally esteemed.
On the second Sunday after our arrival at Paris we went to see the court and gardens of Versailles, and took our stand among many others in the great gallery to see the King and Queen and their attendants pass to their chapel.
I was not so much struck with the beauty of Marie Antoinette as with the gracefulness of her person, and the very pleasing smile with which her salutation was accompanied, for she noticed us as she passed. Louis XVI. appeared grave and rather melancholy.
We saw the Comte and Comtesse d’Artois at dinner, and it was impossible not to be charmed with the liveliness and elegance of figure which characterised Charles X., who was then a “winged Mercury,” and whose open-hearted, benevolent countenance still retains a charm which neither years nor misfortunes can ever destroy.
At the door, talking to some one of her acquaintance, stood the Princesse de Lamballe, handsome and distinguished in her appearance. How painful it is to recur to scenes which recal to the mind the dreadful events which occurred a few years afterwards.
We left Paris for Toulouse, taking the road of Orleans and Limoges, a long and tiresome journey, with little interesting or picturesque.
Montauban I thought prettily situated, and it put me in mind of Rinaldo, Bradamante, and other personages with whom Ariosto had made me acquainted.