But yet she took every opportunity of impressing his virtues upon them, telling them what an excellent father they had, and insidiously winning their affection away from their mother, under the form and pretence of the deepest respect and submission.
The marriages of her daughters which had so delighted her ambition, had not brought her all the happiness she expected.
Mme. de Lawoestine, the elder one, whom she describes as an angelic creature in whom no fault could be seen, died at one and twenty in her confinement. It was a terrible shock to her, and, it appears, also to the husband, although the contents of certain tablets of his wife’s, which he found and gave to Mme. de Genlis some days after her death, would seem to imply that he would not be inconsolable.
One cannot help seeing in the sentiments expressed and the manner of expressing them, the artificial, affected tone which with Mme. de Genlis had become her second nature, and which she had evidently inculcated into her daughter.
The tablets had two columns, over one of which was written, “Calculations of the infidelities of my husband during the five years of our marriage.” They were written down year by year, and when all added up, came to twenty-one.
Over the other column was written, “Let us see mine,” and these were represented by a column of noughts. At the bottom was written, “Total: Satisfaction!!”
“And she really loved her husband!” exclaimed Mme. de Genlis in a fervour of admiration.
Countless were the inconsistencies of the faddists of the party to which she belonged, and in the crotchets of which she had educated her daughter, but what duty or reason or “satisfaction” could there be in such a calculation as this?
And what could be more contradictory to the jargon about Nature, whose guidance, impulses, feelings, &c., were to be so implicitly obeyed, than the spectacle of a woman in the height of her youth and beauty, loving her husband, and yet amusing herself by writing in her pocket-book in this cold-blooded manner, a long list of his infidelities and ending by expressing her satisfaction?
As to the other daughter, Mme. de Valence, her marriage had turned out just as might have been foretold by any one of common sense. M. de Valence did not change his conduct in the least, he was still one of the most dissipated men in Paris though he never stooped to the dishonour of Philippe-Égalité. He remained always the favourite of Mme. de Montesson, who at her death left her whole fortune to him.