“Madame, do you know what it costs to wish for once in one’s life to see the sun rise? Read that and tell me what you think of the poetry of our friends.”
The Queen read it, burst into tears, and demanded justice and vengeance, which the King, throwing down and trampling on the infamous paper, promised; but said it was difficult to find the persons guilty of writing and selling it—it seemed to have been printed in Holland and the authorship was guessed to be one of the Radical set: Voltaire, Brissot, or perhaps the Duc de Chartres.
Marie Antoinette spoke to the latter about it, and of course he indignantly denied all complicity, but confessed that the libel had been sent him in an envelope, adding that he had thrown it into the fire, and if any of his people had been more imprudent he would dismiss them at once.
For the first circulation had been traced to some of his household. He sent away two men in his service, but it was well known that he paid them their wages all the time and soon took them back again.
It was asserted by one person that she had seen the MS. of the “Aurore” on the table of Mme. de Genlis, but it is not likely that she would have been guilty of mixing herself in such an infamy; it was one of the slanders, probably, of which she complained, but was the result of associating intimately with such a man as the Duc de Chartres.
E. H. Bearne
NICE
The Count and Countess de Genlis accompanied the Duke and Duchess de Chartres to Bordeaux, where he embarked, after a naval review; and the Duchess proceeded on a tour in Italy. To Félicité this was a time of enchantment. The journeys at that time were adventurous, and the Cornice road was then an affair of difficulty if not danger. They went by sea to Nice, spent a week in that delicious climate, and determined to make what she called “the perilous journey” from Nice to Genoa. They went on mules over the pass by Turbia, and found the Cornice as she says truly a corniche—so narrow that in some places they could hardly pass singly, and often they had to get down and walk. They slept at Ospedaletto, the Duchess, Félicité, and the Countess de Rully in one room; the Duchess on a bed made of the rugs of the mules, the others, on cloaks spread upon a great heap of corn. After six days of perils and fatigues, and what they called horrible precipices, they got to Genoa.
They went to Rome, Venice, Naples, and all the little Italian Courts, at which they were received with great honour.