Recollections of Baron de Frénilly, peer of France (1768-1828)

Introduction

FRAN901S AuGusTE DE Frenilly, the author of these Recollections, was born in Paris on November 14, 1768. He belonged to the class which was at the head of the moneymarket, and which, to use his own words, was in the eighteenth century equivalent to a State position and on a level with the upper magistrature and the high nobility of Paris. His father was Receiver-General for the appanage of the Count of Artois, Poitou and Angoumois. His mother, Mme. Chastelain, who came of a parliamentary family, had an uncle, M. de Saint- Waast, Avho was Administrator-General of crown-lands.

His tutors — and notably the Abbe Brejole — ever allowed him great freedom. With Brejole he lived at Rheims for three ■years — from 1785 to 1788, studying law and at the same time reading novels, and, during the holidays, making excursions into foreign comitries. His mother''s desire was that he should become a magistrate, and she held up before him as a model the brilliant Herault de Sechelles, the spoiled child of Fame, the idol of the women of the day, the man to whom she aspired as a husband for her daughter. Frenilly sustained his thesis and successfully passed his examinations, and it was the good-looking, sprightly Sechelles who received him as an advocate in Parliament. He, also, wished to become a magistrate, a councillor, a master of requests, and finally an intendant. An intendancy appeared to him to be the most honourable of posts for a man of spirit and intelligence. Was not an intendant the head of his province, and had not Turgot risen

from the intendancy of Limoges to the position of Controller- General ?

But Frenilly's great-uncle, M. de Saint-Waast, intended that he should succeed him as Administrator-General of crown-lands. So Frenilly, although he had a supreme disdain for finance, had to study domanial science. He proceeded to Poitiers, which he calls his capital, since, on coming of age, he was to take over his father's post, that of Receiver- General of Poitou, and he there spent — between 1788 and 1790 — two of the happiest years of his life, dining with the Intendant, the Bishop, and the financiers, who, notwithstanding their age, bowed down before this stripling, gladly attending the soirees of the elegant and amiable nobility, paying court to the charming Amaranthe d*'Esparts, visiting those good, big chateaux which then made Poitou the most sociable province in France, and roving through the woods of Monts with the three Mesdemoiselles Turpin. He became the favoin*ite both of Poitiers and Poitou. He gave luncheons ; he played brelan and shuttlecock as much as people liked ; he had a taste for music, singing and drawing ; he was a good dancer ; and, after taking lessons in Paris with the celebrated Petit, at twelve francs each, he possessed the art of entering a drawing-room gracefully, of making a slight bow to the assembled company, and of advancing towards his hostess without being encumbered by lace, hat, sword or muff.

He returned to Paris four days before the Federation of July 14, 1790, and saw Talleyrand celebrate the high mass, in the open air and amidst a pelting rain.

He detested the Revolution at its outset, not only because it deprived him of his positions and patrimony, but because he was instinctively an aristocrat. The aristocracy was with him, he tells us, " an indelible element, united with the very marrow of his bones,"" and at the first glance he perceived what was behind the veil of that Revolution which looked so promising. On seeing a bust of Lafayette in his mother''s drawing-room his hair stood on end, and when Mme. de Frenilly remarked that the Revolution was a child which committed follies, but which would grow up to be a man, he replied, " Mother, it will become a monster.'" He

I^^TRODUCTION vi

went thrice, in company with Semonville, to the Jacobins club, and came away disgusted. At the news of the King's flight he was wild with delight. He looked upon the Legislative Assembly as consisting merely of low-class revolutionaries whose sole idea was the destruction of the throne, and styled June 20 a disgusting, noisy revel, organised by the Orleanists, who counted on " the King and the Dauphin rising to heaven, like Romulus, in the midst of the tumult."

Frenilly enhsted in the Filles Saint-Thomas battalion of the National Guard. He took a close part in the events of August ] 0, and was one of the company of Chasseurs which escorted the royal family to the doors of the Legislative Assembly.

After the September massacres, he left Paris with his mother and sister. For two years he lived at Loches, undisturbed, thanks to the influence of a Jacobin of the town. He made, however, a few journeys to Paris. He was in the Rue Saint- Honore when the cart bearing Danton and Herault de Sechelles to the scaffold passed, and he visited the imprisoned Farm ers- General.

On hearing of the 9th of Thermidor, Frenilly was seized with convulsions of joy ; for if the conquerors had still need of *' retaining laws of iron and blood " the reaction was bound to come. He then went to reside at Chartres, but soon definitely returned to Paris, where he got himself put into requisition as a flower painter ! The political situation had so changed that in 1795 he defended the very Convention which in 1793 he had called a band of base cowards, governed by despicable scoundrels and vile prostitutes. He was one of the National Guard which, on the 1st of Prairial, entered the assembly room by one door and expelled the fatigued, disconcerted and powerless populace by another. He formed part of the column which took possession of the Faubourg Saint- Antoine. But he did not belong to Freron's jeunesse doree, and if he sang the " Reveil du peuple,"" it was in the form of a parody. Instead of saying to the Convention :

Suivez le cours de votre gloire he said •

Suivez le cours de la riviere.

viii INTRODUCTION

Nevertheless, the fragments of good society were coming together. From 1796 to 1800, Frenilly was, as Mme. d'Esquelbecq called him, la Jleur des pois. He composed light poetry and a vaudeville which was hissed by the public and even by its author ; he cut a brilliant figure at balls, suppers and in society plays ; he was welcomed and feted everywhere — at the Vindes', the Lecouteulx du Moleys"", the Merard de Saint-Justs', and at Mme, d'Houdetot's ; and he formed friendships with Pasquier, Mathieu Mole, Christian de Lamoignon, and Baron de Stael — the last of whom, the most handsome man in Sweden, married for money, he says, the ugliest woman in France.

As it was necessary for him to settle down, he married, in May 1800, a young widow, Mme. de Chemilly, the sweetest, tenderest, and most devoted of women and mothers. She brought him as a do^vry the large estate of Boumeville, in the Department of the Oise, near Marolles, and a league from Ferte-Milon. From 1800 to 1830 Frenilly exploited this domain. Gifted, according to his own testimony, with the bump of order and a passion for arranging and creating, he succeeded, by dint of incessant care, in making his kitchen-garden one of the finest in France, and a celebrated scientific agriculturist, the Marquis de Crevecoeur, declared that M. de Frenilly's plantations were the best managed of any he had ever seen.

Frenilly lived at Bourneville until the year 1830. But in 1807 he spent the winter in Paris, on the first floor of a house in the Faubourg Saint-Honore. There his wife held a saloriy the frequenters of Avhich were on the most intimate terms, composed, as they were, of the members of allied families, such as the Damas, the Lamoignons, the Rosambos, the Montbretons, and the Mezys.

He believed in the durability of the Empire ; the birth of the King of Rome appeared to him to consolidate the new dynasty. When anxiously counting the cannon-shots on March 20, 1811, the twenty-second almost knocked him down. A son had been born to Napoleon, and that cannon-shot had killed the Bourbon race.

But was not Napoleon the scourge of Europe ? Was he not turning France into what Italy was under Nero and Domitian

INTRODUCTION ix

— a nation of conquerors abroad but of slaves at home ? According to Frenilly, true patriots ought to aspire to the fall of Napoleon. The invasion of the allied armies would certainly be a calamity, but it would prevent a still greater disaster. Their triumph would deliver the country, and it Avas the duty of every one who loved France to wish that, cost what it might, she should shake off the yoke of this Corsican, this " foreign upstart," and be handed to her legitimate sovereigns.

Therefore he enthusiastically welcomed the return of the Bourbons, in whose honour he composed an epic poem in two cantos, entitled " Fin du poeme de la Revolution." During the Hundred Days, he refused to remain in France and determined to reach Ghent by way of England.

After the Hundred Days, he threw himself into politics. He began by publishing an opuscle, called " Considerations sur mie annee de Thistoire de France," which brought him the praise of Vitrolles and the favoiu' of the Comte d''Artois, and followed it up with a work on Representative Assemblies. In 1816 and 1820 he tried to get elected deputy for the Oise. One of the most earnest of the ultras, he boasted of conspiring and of belonging to the fine floAver of rebels. He joined the Society knoAvn as " des bonnes etudes " — later a nursery for magistrates and royalist administrators ; diligently corresponded with the directors of French missions ; and became an active collaborator on the Conservatenr, Avhich, on its ceasing to appear, he revived and continued for some time, with the aid of Ronald and Lammennais, under the title of the Defenseitr.

At last, in 1821, he was elected deputy for the arrondissement of Savenay. On the faith of his writings, he tells us, Bretons and inhabitants of the Vendee offered to entrust him with their affairs. He joined the pietistes group, consisting of those members of parliament — La Bourdonnaye, Delalot, and several others — who met in the comfortable salon of Deputy Piet, and, in 1824, after his re-election, he was appointed Reporter to the Committee of the Budget. The Comte d'Artois liked him exceedingly, and once a week, from the winter of 1821, Frenilly called at the Pavilion de Marsan to pay court to Monsieur. In the month of August 1824 this friendship led to his appointment as a Councillor of State.

X INTRODUCTION

In November 1827 he was created a Peer, with seventy-five others. It was, he says, a foolish and colossal " batch," and the three ordinances which Villele then issued — those creating Peers, dissolving the Chamber, and suppressing the censureship — presaged the fall of the monarchy.

It is at this stage of his life that Frenilly brings his Memoirs to a close. On the outbreak of the Revolution of 1830, he remained faithful to the White Flag and left the country. Selling his beloved Bourneville, he travelled in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and finally settled, first in Vienna and afterwards in Gratz, in the neighbourhood of the Duchesse de Berry and the royal family, which he continued to see until the end of his days. He died in Gratz on August 1, 1848.

II

Frenilly wrote his Recollections whilst in exile, between 1837 and 1848 — not continuously but intermittently, at Rome, Bologna, Triest, Ischl, Innsbruck, and Gratz ; he composed them in order to kill time and because, as he puts it, he preferred to talk nonsense rather than to veg-etate. Written in this way by fits and starts, these souvenirs contain a few errors and inexactitudes. The author was describing a period long since passed, and, though he may have preserved his correspondence since 1807, he had no annals, he tells us, within his reach.

Moreover, he is not free from vanity ; he exaggerates the part he played and would have us believe that he was one of the chief actors at the time of the Restoration. Hardly had he been elected a deputy than he asked to be appointed Minister of Public Instruction in order " to defend the throne and the Church against philosophism," and his colleague and friend Salaberry declares, in regard to this, that he had a Jmppe both on his head and mind.^

Finally, he was a party man, and many of his judgments are dictated by prejudice. Let us accept his description of Talleyrand as an infamous wretch and of Fouche as a knave, 1 Salaberry, Soiiveyiirs polltiq^ies, 1900, vol. i. p. 14.

INTRODUCTION xi

if you like ! But he regards Voltaire as a deadly man who merited only scorn and aversion. He execrates that " Gilles Cesar," Lafayette — Washington's clown, the most infatuated and pedantic of giddy-headed persons who brought from America the principles of Penn and Franklin, the silly hero whom France, to her shame, twice raised towards the throne. He condemns La Bedoyere as a criminal, Fabvier as a rogue, Manuel as a little monster, and Casimir-Perier as a lunatic. He considers Fievee to be an insolent fop whose opinion was to be found in any one's purse. He styles General Foy — who, according to Pasquier, greatly honoured the tribune of the Chamber by his character and eloquence — a solemn clown and scoundrel, with the face of an assistant barber. He hasonly a feeling of disgust for Benjamin Constant, whose physiognomy, like his soul and his speeches, seemed to him to be " saturated with cruelty, impudence, hatred and envy."" In the Due de Richelieu he sees only a philosopher without talent — in Decazes a Narcissus with the shoulders of a lackey, a wretch who possessed but the bearing of a handsome coachman, a vulgar effrontery and a decisive mind.

The Orleans family inspired him with a feeling of horror. Why were they allowed to sojourn in France ? he asks. Why were they not left in their " vipers' nest " at Twickenham ? Was not their return, with the dissolution of the " undiscoverable " Chamber and the famine, one of the three calamities which desolated France in 1816? And he insinuates that Louis Philippe did the same work as Philippe Egalite — paid the murderer of the Due de Berry.

Frenilly liked neither Louis XVI. nor Louis XVIII.

He recalls the fact that the fashionables of Versailles nicknamed Louis XVI. " The Locksmith " or " The Big Pig," and reproaches him with having lacked spirit, judgment, taste and a sense of moderation.

As to Louis XVIII., he was his hite noire. On seeing this stout, sickly and fatigued man enter Paris in 1814 — lolling in his calash and insensible to the people's joy — ^he experienced a painful impression, which soon turned to astonishment and sorrow. What ! — he exclaims — Louis XVIII. neither makes nor unmakes anything ! He neither resuscitates the provinces xii INTRODUCTION

and the parliaments nor re-establishes the masterships and the corporations ! Four companies of musketeers is all that he accepts of the old regime ! What ! after the Hundred Days he employs Talleyrand and Fouche ! He entrusts the ministry to the Due de Richelieu, who has neither hatred nor love for the royal family — to Decazes, who becomes at one and the same time the child, friend and master of his king ! Frenilly never ceases, in the last part of his Memoirs, to deplore the liberalism of Louis XVIII. and to declare, in a tone of sorrow and anger, that the king was assisting the Jacobins to destroy the monarchy. He cries that he would gladly have seen Louis XVIII. at Pondicherry, and seriously asks if it is possible to love one's native country without despising such a man ! He reproaches him with the dissolution of the " undiscoverable " Chamber, that dissolution which brought about " the king's dishonour and the loss of his cause.*" He reproaches him with having sanctioned the Loi Gouvion Saint Cyr. And he reproaches him with not having, after the assassination of the Due de Berry, dissolved the Chamber and banished the Orleans. In his opinion, Louis had dragged France into a fatal rut ; like the emigres, he had neither learnt nor forgotten anything — he was but " an egoist and doctrinaire.""

Louis XVIII. was aware of Frenilly's views. He ironically called him M. de Frenesie,^ and spoke not a single word to him when on July 1, 1819, he signed the marriage contract of Claire de Frenilly and Camille de Pimodan.

Similarly, Frenilly had little liking for the Due and Duchesse d'Angouleme. One lacked polished speech, the other polished manners. The Duke, with his narrow, flat head, was possessed by a craze for liberalism ; the Duchess, heroic and saintly though she might be, was unable to save the imperilled monarchy. She sacrificed her conscience to her wifely duties and knew not how to gain people's hearts. In the midst of the joy of the Vendee she was stiff and embarrassed ; on entering Paris with Louis XVIII. she seemed as though imprisoned in her new corset, and the sorry figure which she cut recalled the past and foreshadowed the future.

Frenilly's king, the king after his own heart, was Charles X. _ 1 Mhnoires et Souvenirs d'un pair de France, vol. iv. p. 342.-

INTRODUCTION xiii

He would not let France drift ! If less witty than Louis XVIII. he possessed lofty, noble sentiments, and his correspondence with the Bailiff of Crussol, which Frenilly had in his hands, displayed the soul and style of a Henry IV. He could recognise, moreover, Frenilly's devotion. At Claire's marriage with the Marquis de Piraodan he bestowed upon the baron " kindness and even praise."

Thus does Frenilly bring political passion into his judgments. But this very sincerity is what makes his " Recollections " of value. Under the Restoration he did not hesitate to sever relations with those of his friends Avho no longer shared his opinions. He was long connected Avith Norvins, Lacretelle, Pasquier, Barante, and Vinde ; but as soon as they enrolled themselves under the banner of liberalism he ceased to see them. His appreciations, therefore, testify to a state of mind which it is necessary to know. He is, as he himself says in two passages, a fierce aristocrat, and after all, this rigidity and stubbornness of principles does him honour. Although it has been said that the absurd man is he who never changes, men who, like Frenilly, will neither depart from their ideas nor renounce their faith, ever inspire esteem and respect.

Ill

Baron de Frenilly's Souvenirs present a series of pictures of real interest.

He describes Paris as it was before the Revolution : fashionable Paris which thought of naught but pleasure, sentimental and sensible Paris, where in the corner of a drawing-room and surrounded by thirty people, mothers suckled their children, " the poor victims of Rousseau," or where young women of twenty declared they no longer danced because they had had a child. He passes in review the theatres, fairs, balls and fashions. He introduces us into those important financial families which were becoming a nobility, whilst the nobility transformed itself into the people, presenting to us, in addition to his uncle Saint- Waast, old Delahante, graceful and rather xiv INTRODUCTION

given to bantering ; Delahante's nephew, tall, bony, square built, and, notwithstanding his hard, dry face, an excellent man ; liUzines, cold in manner and imposing in bearing ; and Lauzon, a stout jovial fellow with the commonest manners in the world. He takes us to the lectuies at the Lycee — to those delivered by Garat, a pale, heavy and verbose litterateur — to those of La Harpe, ruddy of cheek and forehead, and finally to those of Deparcieiix, the skilful physicist and lucid demonstrator. He knew intimately the ardent CEspremesnil and those youthful members of the Chamber of Inquiries — foppish philosophers just out of college ! — who imagined that they formed an Areopagus or a senate. But were not most parliamentarians filled with the conceit and turbulent pride of the Enquetes ?

With the same rapid pencil, sometimes delicately, sometimes vigorously, he sketches the physiognomy of revolutionary Paris.

He shows how the Revolution spread in the capital. Were not the Deputies fashionable ? They were received consequently with honour ; and the Revolution having thus entered the salons " daily contact with errors and honeyed baseness, often even eloquent, imperceptibly caused modifications, inoculations and grafts.""

He relates some striking anecdotes of this epoch which paint human cowardice in the most vivid colours. Whilst travelling in the diligence to Loches, after the September massacres, the son of an Attorney-General of the Parliament of Nancy, seeing the Orleans prisoners pass, shouted at the top of his voice : " A la guillotine ! " " At any rate keep your mouth closed," protested Frenilly. " Ah ! " replied his companion, " I shout because Fm afraid."

The Paris of the Terror is revivified in a few pages. Carriages there are none ; the streets are silent ; the men wear coarse carmagnoles, which the youth of the city still find a means of making elegant ; there is a dearth of everything ; long files of famished people stand at the bakers'" and butchers"' doors ; friends assemble secretly to eat white bread ; and Frenilly, one terrible frosty day, went as far as Charenton to fetch a handcart filled with wood, which he prudently dragged across the fields.

I

INTRODUCTION xv

He calls up several curious scenes in Parisian life under the Directory. People vied with each other in misfortune and poverty, declaring, in order to be in the fashion, that they were ruined, and had either been persecuted or imprisoned, regretting almost that they had not been guillotined, but adding that they might have been on the day after, or two days after the 9 th of Thermidor. At a Irmcheon attended by these \'ictims, Frenilly submitted to the affront of being the only person present who had not been imprisoned.

The society of the Empire is not forgotten : we see it amusing itself, and every year, from the last Sunday in August to the second Sunday in September, with plays performed at Le Marais. Some people are irreconcilable and refuse to enter into a covenant with Bonaparte, the murderer of the Due d'Enghien ; others go to the Tuileries and — with the exception of Pasquier and Mathieu Mole — slander the Master.

Pretty and lively portraits are mingled with these descriptions. What a brilliant gallery is passed before us in the chapter devoted to the noble dames and damsels who reigned in the salons of Poitiers and the chateaux of Poitou !

Frenilly excels in describing women. They abound in his work. There is a portrait, for instance, of his cousin, the Marquise de Bon, so brisk and coquettish. Another of Mme. Grant, who became Princesse de Talleyrand. She loved Frenilly, and he speaks of her with a taste and delicacy which authors of memoirs do not always show. A third of Mme. d'Houdetot ; a fourth of Josephine, the Josephine of the Directory ; and a fifth of Hortense de Beauharnais, who danced so well, wrote such pretty songs, and so cordially detested her royal and disagreeable husband.

Men are portrayed in the same vivacious, witty, happy manner, and in a few exact and nervous strokes.

Literary portraits are as numerous as political ones in Frenilly's Memoirs. His maternal grandmother was an admirer of fine minds and she held a salon, the oracle of which was the Abbe de Mably. Twice or thrice a week his mother sent him with his tutor Brejole to the exclusive gatherings of D'Alembert and Mannontel. In 1778, at the house of the Marquis de Villette, he saw the aged Voltaire, buried in an armchair and xvi INTRODUCTION

wearing on his head a huge bearskin cap which covered him down to his eyes.

Let me add that Frenilly knows how to tell a story, and that his narratives are full of animation. The finest account in his recollections is that of the events of August 10. The scene he describes is unforgettable : the procession silently descending the Escalier de THorloge, lined with old Swiss soldiers in tears, the king being drawn into the Assembly, his escort remaining at the foot of the staircase and seeing pikes rise before them bearing the heads of victims, the cannonade suddenly bursting forth, and Louis XVI. ordering the firing to cease !

All that now remains for me to do, in concluding this too brief introduction, is to thank the heirs of that Baron de Frenilly, whose " Recollections " will, I hope, take a distinguished place in the already rich collection of French Memoirs.

Arthur Chuquet,

Menibre de TInstitut.

Contents

CHAPTEE I

1768-1780 Object of these Memoirs — The author's father and mother — His maternal relatives — His grandmother — His great uncle, M. de Saint-Waast — His paternal relatives — His uncle, M. de Fauveau — Cousin Flore — Cousins Chazet, the Marquise de Bon and Baronne de Mackau — Carmontelle — M. Pascal — Lekain and Mme. de Mesnil — The private tutor Thiriot — Mme. de Lavoisier — The Academic de Saint-Ouen — Mme. and Mile. Necker — Mme. Le Senechal — The Marquis de Bi^vre — Rulhiere — The Chevalier de Cercey — Monticour — Chastellux — Visit to Voltaire — Louis XVI. 's entry into Paris — The children of the Marquis de Girardin— Death of the author's father — Dr. Bary Pp. 1-16

Chapter II

1780-1787 Mme. de Frenilly's grief — Transformation of the Palais Royal — Anger against the Due de Chartres — Paris in 1780 — Dinners and suppers — Suckling — Hostesses — Importance of the Forty — Obstructions to traffic — The theatres — The fairs — Other pleasures of people of quality — Longchamp — Balls — The ball at the Opera — A tutor — Guiraudet-Brejole — D'Alembert — Comte de Tressan — Condorcet — Maury — Delille — Marmontel — Morellet — Lc Mariage de Figaro — The public mind — The newsmongers — The Cracow Tree — Metra — Patriotism — Louis XVI.'s nickname — Lafayette or Gilles Cesar — Travels — Ermenonville — Sojourn at Rheims — Reading — Religion — An excursion in Germany — Amsterdam — Holland — London — The Woolwich review — Misfortunes of a notary — D'Orcy — Herault de Sechelles — Parisian actresses Pp. 17-34

Chapter III

1787 Travels in Switzerland — Motiers-Travers — The Principality of Neuchiltel — M, de Garville — Saint-Gallen — Rorschach — Altstetten — Gais — Zurich — Lavater — Gessner — Glaris — Linththal — Ascent of the Todi — Wesen — Coire — Bergiin — The Engadine — St. Maurice — The Bernina Pass — Lago Bianco and Lago Nero — Tirano — Sondrio — The Lake of Como — Domaso and Gravedona — Chiavenna — Campodolcino — Reichenau — Andermatt — Realp — Obergestelen — The Grismel — The Reuse — Ponte del Diavolo — Altorf — The Rigi — Zug — Lucerne — Meiringen — Lauterbrunnen — Unterseen — The Valais — Chamonix — Vevey — Disagreement with Brejole — Geneva — Coppet and Ferney — The Dauphine — Return to Paris

Chapter IV 1787-1791

Entry into society — Unhealthy pride — Awkwardness and embarrassment —

Paris in 1787 — Fashions and dresses— Breteuil — Mme. de Saint-Waast's

Salon — Some Farmers-General — Delahante, Luzines, and Lauzon — Lorry,

Bishop of Angers — TheValorys— D'Espremesnil— The Queen — The Polig^

nacs— Louis XVI. — Cardinal" de Rohan— Cagliostro—DOrmesson—Ca-

xvii xviii CONTENTS

lonne — Brienne — The Lycee — Garat — La Harpe — Mme. Recamier — Journey in the Midi — Mme. de Bon — Aries — M. de Bsllefaye — The Beaucaire Fair — A nocturnal conversation — Brejole at Alais — The Cevennes — Mme. de Bon's Flight — Montpellier — Narbonne — Toulouse — Bordeaux — Two years' sojourn at Poitiers — The National Mind — The Nobility of Poitou — Intendant Nanteuil — Bishop Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire — The Beauregard Family — The Nieuils — The Marsillacs — The Marconnays — Presidents Chassenon and Bazoges — The Vigiers — The Moisins — The D'Asnieres — The Chasteigners — The D'Aloigny de Rocheforts — The Margarets — Mile. d'Esparts and Mile, de Pradel — The Chateau de Monts — The La Chastres — The three Turpin ladies — The Montalemberts — The Revolution — The Great Fear — Departure for Paris — The Federation of July 14, 1790 — Talleyrand — Paris and Versailles — The Club — Political conversations — Death of M. de Saint-Waast — The Hotel de Jonzac — Necker — Bailly — D'Orcy — Norvins — D'Alency — De Lessart — Mme. L'Empereur — Mme. Le Sen^chal — Arnault — Fiorian — Desfaucherets — The Parsevals — Flore becomes Mme. de Romeuf — The Romenfs — Apparent peace — Journey in Touraine — Beaugency — Bois Bonnard — Poitiers — The cook Sichere — Monts and Rigny — Oiron — Flight of the King — The Emigration — The district of Lu5on — La Voulte in the Ard^che — Lafayette at Clermont and Chavaniac Pp. 46-99

CHAPTER V 1792-1798 The H6tel de Jonzac — The Manege — The Declaration of War — First defeats — The 20th of June — The 10th of August — Beginning of the Terror — Loches — Alligny — Cosne — Chenonceaux — Mme. Dupin — Journey to Paris — Executions — The 9th of Thermidor — The La Goys — Sojourn at Chartres — Ivry — Return to Paris — Poverty — Defeat of the Faubourg Saint- Antoine — The Prulays — The Marcols — The 13th of Vendemiaire — The Directory — M. de Vind^ and his family — The Academie des Chansons — The Lecouteulx du Moleys — Nepomucene Lemercier — Baron de Stael — Mme. de Breg4 — Mme. d'Bsquelbecq — The Dillons and the Mallets— M. de Nervo — Play hissed at the Vaudeville — Pauline de Noailles — The Babeuf trial — The Vignys — Magnanville — Talleyrand — Laborie — Mme. Tallien — Mme. de Beauharnais — The tailor Dasse — Retirement — Death of the author's mother . Pp. 100-157