The elder lady was so truly French—so vive and so triste in turn—that she seemed formed from the written character of a Frenchwoman, such, at least, as we English write them. She was very forlorn in her air, and very sorrowful in her countenance; yet all action and gesture, and of an animation when speaking nearly fiery in its vivacity: neither pretty nor young, but neither ugly nor old; and her smile, which was rare, had a finesse very engaging; while her whole demeanour announced a person Of consequence, and all her discourse told that she was well-informed, well-educated, and well-bred.
The other lady, whom they called mademoiselle, as the first madame, was young, dark but clear and bright in her eyes and complexion, though without good features, or a manner of equal interest with the lady she accompanied. She proved, however, sensible, and seemed happy in the general novelty around her. She spoke English pretty well, and was admired without mercy by the rest of the party, as a perfect mistress of the language. The madame spoke it very ill indeed, but pleasantly.
Of the two gentlemen, one they called only monsieur, and the other the madame addressed as her brother. The monsieur was handsome, rather tonnish, and of the high haughty ton, and seemed the devoted attendant or protector of the madame, who sometimes spoke to him almost with asperity, from eagerness, and a tinge of wretchedness and impatience, which coloured all she said; and, at other times, softened off her vehemence with a smile the most expressive, and which made its way to the mind immediately, by coming with sense and meaning, and not merely from good humour and good spirits as the more frequent smiles of happier persons. The brother seemed lively and obliging, and entirely at the devotion of his sister, who gave him her commands with an authority that would not have brooked dispute.
They told us they were just come from Southampton, which they had visited in their way from viewing the fleet at the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, and they meant to go on now to Bath.
We soon found they were aristocrats, which did better for them with Mrs. Ord and me than it would have done with you republicans of Norbury and Mickleham; yet I wish you had all met the madame, and heard her Indignant unhappiness. They had been in England but two months. They all evidently belonged to madame, who appeared to me a fugitive just before the flight of the French king,[346] or in consequence of his having been taken. She entered upon her wretched situation very soon, lamenting that he was, in fact, no king, and bewailing his want of courage for his trials. The queen she never mentioned. She spoke once or twice of son mari, but did not say who or what he was, nor where.
“They say,” she cried, “In France they have now liberty! Who has liberty, le peuple, or the mob? Not les honnetes gens; for those whose principles are known to be aristocratic must fly, or endure every danger and indignity. Ah! est-ce la la liberte?”
The monsieur said he had always been the friend of liberty, such as it was in England; but in France it was general tyranny. “In England,” he cried, “he was a true democrat, though bien aristocrate in France.”
“At least,” said the poor madame, “formerly, in all the sorrows of life, we had nos terres to which we could retire, and there forget them, and dance, and sing, and laugh, and fling them all aside, till forced back to Paris. But now our villas are no protection: we may be safe, but the first offence conceived by le peuple is certain destruction; and, without a moment’s warning, we may be forced to fly our own roofs, and see them and all we are worth burnt before our eyes in horrible triumph.”
This was all said in French. But the anguish of her Countenance filled me with compassion, though it was scarcely possible to restrain a smile when, the moment after, she said she might be very wrong, but she hoped I would forgive her if she owned she preferred Paris incomparably to London and pitied me very unreservedly for never having seen that first of cities.
Her sole hope, she said, for the overthrow of that anarchy in which the Unguarded laxity of the king had plunged the first Country in the world,—vous me pardonnee, Mademoiselle,—was now from the German princes, who, she flattered herself, would rise In their own defence.