Mr. Ellice’s position as a minister, and his habitual residence in Paris, had brought him in touch with the leading statesmen of France. He was intimately acquainted with Louis Philippe, with Talleyrand, with Guizot, with Thiers, and most of the French men and French women whose names were bruited in the early part of the nineteenth century.
When I was taken from Temple Grove, I was placed, by the advice and arrangement of Mr. Ellice, under the charge of a French family, which had fallen into decay—through the change of dynasty. The Marquis de Coubrier had been Master of the Horse to Charles X. His widow—an old lady between seventy and eighty—with three maiden daughters, all advanced in years, lived upon the remnant of their estates in a small village called Larue, close to Bourg-la-Reine, which, it may be remembered, was occupied by the Prussians during the siege of Paris. There was a château, the former seat of the family; and, adjoining it, in the same grounds, a pretty and commodious cottage. The first was let as a country house to some wealthy Parisians; the cottage was occupied by the Marquise and her three daughters.
The personal appearances of each of these four elderly ladies, their distinct idiosyncrasies, and their former high position as members of a now moribund nobility, left a lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps, from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, with a broad frill which flopped over her tortoise-shell spectacles. She wore a black bombazine gown, and list slippers. When in the garden, where she was always busy in the summer-time, she put on wooden sabots over her slippers.
Despite this homely exterior, she herself was a ‘lady’ in every sense of the word. Her manner was dignified and courteous to everyone. To her daughters and to myself she was gentle and affectionate. Her voice was sympathetic, almost musical. I never saw her temper ruffled. I never heard her allude to her antecedents.
The daughters were as unlike their mother as they were to one another. Adèle, the eldest, was very stout, with a profusion of grey ringlets. She spoke English fluently. I gathered, from her mysterious nods and tosses of the head, (to be sure, her head wagged a little of its own accord, the ringlets too, like lambs’ tails,) that she had had an affaire de cœur with an Englishman, and that the perfidious islander had removed from the Continent with her misplaced affections. She was a trifle bitter, I thought—for I applied her insinuations to myself—against Englishmen generally. But, though cynical in theory, she was perfectly amiable in practice. She superintended the ménage and spent the rest of her life in making paper flowers. I should hardly have known they were flowers, never having seen their prototypes in nature. She assured me, however, that they were beautiful copies—undoubtedly she believed them to be so.
Henriette, the youngest, had been the beauty of the family. This I had to take her own word for, since here again there was much room for imagination and faith. She was a confirmed invalid, and, poor thing! showed every symptom of it. She rarely left her room except for meals; and although it was summer when I was there, she never moved without her chauffrette. She seemed to live for the sake of patent medicines and her chauffrette; she was always swallowing the one, and feeding the other.
The middle daughter was Agläé. Mademoiselle Agläé took charge—I may say, possession—of me. She was tall, gaunt, and bony, with a sharp aquiline nose, pomegranate cheek-bones, and large saffron teeth ever much in evidence. Her speciality, as I soon discovered, was sentiment. Like her sisters, she had had her ‘affaires’ in the plural. A Greek prince, so far as I could make out, was the last of her adorers. But I sometimes got into scrapes by mixing up the Greek prince with a Polish count, and then confounding either one or both with a Hungarian pianoforte player.
Without formulating my deductions, I came instinctively to the conclusion that ‘En fait d’amour,’ as Figaro puts it, ‘trop n’est pas même assez.’ From Miss Agläé’s point of view a lover was a lover. As to the superiority of one over another, this was—nay, is—purely subjective. ‘We receive but what we give.’ And, from what Mademoiselle then told me, I cannot but infer that she had given without stint.
Be that as it may, nothing could be more kind than her care of me. She tucked me up at night, and used to send for me in the morning before she rose, to partake of her café-au-lait. In return for her indulgences, I would ‘make eyes’ such as I had seen Auguste, the young man-servant, cast at Rose the cook. I would present her with little scraps which I copied in roundhand from a volume of French poems. Once I drew, and coloured with red ink, two hearts pierced with an arrow, a copious pool of red ink beneath, emblematic of both the quality and quantity of my passion. This work of art produced so deep a sigh that I abstained thenceforth from repeating such sanguinary endearments.
Not the least interesting part of the family was the servants. I say ‘family,’ for a French family, unlike an English one, includes its domestics; wherein our neighbours have the advantage over us. In the British establishment the household is but too often thought of and treated as furniture. I was as fond of Rose the cook and maid-of-all-work as I was of anyone in the house. She showed me how to peel potatoes, break eggs, and make pot-au-feu. She made me little delicacies in pastry—swans with split almonds for wings, comic little pigs with cloves in their eyes—for all of which my affection and my liver duly acknowledged receipt in full. She taught me more provincial pronunciation and bad grammar than ever I could unlearn. She was very intelligent, and radiant with good humour. One peculiarity especially took my fancy—the yellow bandana in which she enveloped her head. I was always wondering whether she was born without hair—there was none to be seen. This puzzled me so that one day I consulted Auguste, who was my chief companion. He was quite indignant, and declared with warmth that Mam’selle Rose had the most beautiful hair he had ever beheld. He flushed even with enthusiasm. If it hadn’t been for his manner, I should have asked him how he knew. But somehow I felt the subject was a delicate one.