Amongst others who arrived were the Duchesse de Fleury and Princesse Joseph de Monaco. The latter was a gentle, charming woman, whose devotion to her children was the cause of her death. After having escaped from France and arrived safely in Rome, she was actually foolish enough to go back to Paris with the idea of saving the remains of her fortune for her children. The Terror was in full force; she was arrested and condemned. Those who wished to save her entreated her to declare herself enceinte, by which many women had been spared. She would anyhow have gained a reprieve, and as it happened her life would have been saved, as the ninth Thermidor was rapidly approaching. But her husband was far away, and she indignantly refused, preferring death to such an alternative.
Quite another sort of woman was the Duchesse de Fleury, with whom Lisette formed an intimate friendship. The Duchess, née Aimée de Coigny, was a true type of the women of a certain set at the old French court, and her history was one only possible just at the time in which it took place.
Beautiful, both in face and form, imaginative, brilliant, and fascinating; with charming manners and lax morality, her passionate love of art and natural beauty attracted her to Lisette, who found in her the companion she had long wished for.
They spent their evenings at the Maltese embassy, where the soirées of the Ambassador, Prince Camilla de Rohan, Grand Commander of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, were frequented by all the most intellectual and distinguished people in Rome. They made excursions to all the enchanting places within reach—Tivoli, Tusculum, Monte Mario, the Villa Adriano, and many another ancient palace or imposing ruin; and when the hot weather made Rome insupportable, they took a house together at Gensano, and spent the rest of the summer in those delicious woods. They hired three donkeys to make excursions, and took possession with delight of the ancient villa which had belonged to Carlo Maratta, some of whose sketches might still be seen on the walls of one of its great halls.
All that country, Frascati, L’Ariccia, Castel Gandolfo, Albano, Gensano, is a dream of beauty and romance. Lakes, mountains, and forests, picturesque towns and villages perched high upon the steep sides of precipices, rocks crowned with ruined towers or convents, ancient villas like huge palaces, with colonnades, fountains, and loggie, buried among deep woods of ilex and chestnut, in whose cool shade they could spend the bright, hot, glowing days.
In the evenings they rode or walked, watching the gorgeous sunset and afterglow; and in those radiant Italian nights, when the whole country lay white and brilliant under the light of the southern moon, they would wander through the woods glittering with glow-worms and fireflies, or perhaps by the shores of Lake Nemi, buried deep amongst wooded cliffs, a temple of Diana rising out of its waters.
The Duchesse de Fleury, who had attached herself with such enthusiastic affection to Mme. Le Brun, was scarcely sixteen, although in mind, character, and experience she was far older than her years.
Her mother having died in her early life, she was brought up by her father, the Comte de Coigny, at his château at Mareuil, an enormous place built by the celebrated Duchesse d’Angoulême (whose husband was the last of the Valois, though with the bend sinister), who died in 1713, and yet was the daughter-in-law of Charles IX., who died 1574. [38]
Married when a mere child to the Duc de Fleury, great-nephew of the Cardinal, there was no sort of affection between her husband and herself, each went their own way, and they were scarcely ever in each other’s society. He had also emigrated, but he was not in Rome, and Mme. Le Brun, who was very fond of her, foresaw with anxiety and misgiving the dangers and difficulties which were certain to beset one so young, so lovely, so attractive, and so unprotected, with no one to guide or influence her. Full of romance and passion, surrounded with admiration and temptation, she was already carrying on a correspondence, which could not be anything but dangerous, with the Duc de Lauzun, a handsome, fascinating roué, who had not quitted France, and was afterwards guillotined.