THREE:Barbier, a lawyer and man of the world, whose journal of eight volumes gives a vivid impression of the life of that time, after remarking that the sentence was a very lenient one, [6] that the chateau was not so large as that of many a fermier gnral, and that the building thereof gave employment to many poor people, goes on to say, As for shame, ... if it is because the King has a mistress, why who has not? except M. le duc dOrlans. [7]... The Comte de Clermont, Abb de Saint-Germain-des-Prs, openly keeps Mlle. le Duc, who was an opera dancer; she spends three-quarters of the year at Berny, the Abbs country house, where she does the honours. She has a fine house in the rue de Richelieu, where the Prince often spends a week. The fathers of the abbey who have business with him go to him there in the morning, for he does not lodge in the palace of the abbey. This goes on in sight of every one, and nobody says a word about it.The huissiers and valets de porte, who lived outside the enclosure, had permitted a poor beggar to take shelter every night under a lofty arch leading into the first court of the abbey. He was an unfortunate man, who had neither arms nor legs, and a poor woman, young and, they said, almost pretty, used to come and fetch him each morning with a sort of wheelbarrow, and establish him on the high road to beg. They had bread, soup, and cider given them at the abbey, but very often did not finish them.
THREE:It was time. The day before they left a stone was thrown in at the window just where Mademoiselle dOrlans had been sitting; if it had struck her it might have killed her. It struck her hat which she had hung on the top of a chair. A shower of stones followed, breaking the windows and arousing the Duc de Chartres and their only manservant, who [447] had gone to bed, and who rushed out into the garden, but only in time to hear the hurrying foot-steps of the escaping rascals.
THREE:Caresne was a painter and poet whose poems and pictures were bad, but his conversation amusing. He wrote the following verses to Lisette, whose rapid progress and intelligence made her seem to be already passing out of childhood into girlhood:
TWO:During her exile in England, she was in the habit of visiting and helping the French who were poor or sick, and one day being in a hospital, and seeing a French soldier evidently very ill, she spoke to him with compassion and offered him money, which he refused, with a strange exclamation, apparently of horror.