[398] The Comte de Montmorin did not die on the scaffold, but was butchered at the Abbaye on the 2nd of September 1792. On the next day his cousin, Louis Victor Hippolyte Luce de Montmorin, had his throat cut at the Conciergerie, where he had been taken after his acquittal by the Criminal Tribunal on the 17th of August. Madame de Montmorin, Madame de Beaumont's mother, was guillotined on the 10th of May 1794; her second son was guillotined with her. Her daughter, wife of the Comte de La Luzerne, died on the 10th of July 1794, at the Archbishop's Palace, which had been turned into the prison hospital.—B.
[399] Madame Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1756-1842), née Vigée, the famous French portrait painter. She left nearly 700 portraits, in addition to some historical pictures and a crowd of landscapes.—T.
[400] Matthieu Louis Molé (1781-1855), created a Count of the Empire in 1813, when he became Minister of Justice, and held successive ministries under the Restoration and Louis-Philippe. He was a moderate statesman of much dignity of character and of great distinction of person, manners, and speech. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1840.—T.
[401] Étienne Duc Pasquier (1767-1862), appointed Prefect of Police in 1810. After holding various ministerial offices under the Restoration, he was made President of the Chamber of Peers by Louis-Philippe in 1830, Chancellor in 1837, and a duke in 1844. Elected to the French Academy in 1842.—T.
[402] Louise Marie Victorine Comtesse de Chastenay-Lanty (1771-1855) was never married. Her title of madame is due to the fact that she became a canoness at an early age (1785). Her observation to Chateaubriand on the subject of Joubert will be found repeated in almost precisely the same words in Madame de Chastenay's recently-published Memoirs (1896), vol. II. p. 82.—T.
[403] Louis Bénoît Picard (1769-1828), an actor, theatrical manager, and author of some eighty stage-plays of varying merit. He was received into the French Academy in 1807.—T.
[404] In the "small company" which, at the beginning of the century, met in the drawing-room of Madame de Beaumont, in the Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, or at Chateaubriand's, in his little apartment in the Hôtel Coislin, on the Place Louis XV., or again, in the summer, at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, under M. Joubert's roof, each one, according to an ancient fashion, had his nickname. Chateaubriand was called le chat, the "Cat," by way of abbreviation of his name, or possibly because of his illegible handwriting; Madame de Chateaubriand, who had claws, was the "She-cat." Chênedollé and Gueneau de Mussy, more melancholy than René, had received the names of the "Big" and the "Little Crow;" sometimes also Chateaubriand was called the "Illustrious Crow of the Cordilleras," by allusion to his travels in America. Fontanes was thickset, and had something athletic in his short stature. His friends jestingly compared him to the boar of Erymanthus, and called him the "Boar." Thin and slender, skimming over the earth which she was soon to leave, Madame de Beaumont had received the nickname of the "Swallow." Joubert, a lover of the woods, and at that time a great walker, was the "Stag;" while his wife, who was goodness and wit personified, but of a somewhat fierce humour, laughed when she was called the "She-wolf." Never was so intellectual a collection of "animals" seen before.—B.
[405] Madame Hocquart was a lady possessed of many charms of beauty and mind. She was the daughter of Pourrat and the sister of Madame Laurent Lecoulteux.—B.
[406] The Comtesse de Vintimille du Luc, née de La Live de Jully, was niece to Madame Hocquart.—B.
[407] Marie Duchesse de Chevreuse (1600-1679), née de Rohan-Montbazon, married in 1617 to Albert Duc de Luynes, Constable of France, and in 1622 to Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Chevreuse. The Duchesse de Chevreuse was a favourite of Anne of Austria, and is famed for her beauty and her wit.—T.