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THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED
TO
ANNA AND KATE
PREFACE
IN the histories of the four women whose lives are here related, I have tried, as far as is possible in the limited space, to give an idea of the various ways in which the Revolutionary tempest at the close of the eighteenth century and the eventful years which preceded and followed it, affected, and were regarded by, persons of the different parties and classes to which they belonged.
The characters of the four heroines form as strong a contrast as their circumstances, principles, and surroundings.
In Mme. Le Brun, the most gifted of all, we see a beauty, a genius, and a woman unusually charming and attractive, thrown, before she was sixteen, into the society of the magnificent, licentious court of Louis XV. Married to a dissipated, bourgeois spendthrift, for whom she had never cared; sought after, flattered, and worshipped in all the great courts of Europe; courted by fascinating, unscrupulous men of the highest rank, without the protection of family connections and an assured position; yet her religious principles, exalted character, and passionate devotion to her art, carried her unscathed and honoured through a life of extraordinary dangers and temptations.