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ONE:When the affair was fully explained to her she threw herself at his feet, exclaiming��

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ONE:CHAPTER I

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ONE:IN the autumn of 1790 Lisette went to Naples, with which she was enchanted. She took a house on the Chiaja, looking across the bay to Capri and close to the Russian Embassy. The Ambassador, Count Scawronski, called immediately and begged her to breakfast and dine always at his house, where, although not accepting this invitation, she spent nearly all her evenings. She painted his wife, and, after her, Emma Harte, then the mistress of Sir William Hamilton, as a bacchante, lying on the sea-shore with her splendid chestnut hair falling loosely about her in masses sufficient to cover her. Sir William Hamilton, who was exceedingly avaricious, paid her a hundred louis for the picture, and afterwards sold it in London for three hundred guineas. Later on, Mme. Le Brun, having painted her as a Sybil for the Duc de Brissac after she became Lady Hamilton, copied the head and gave it to Sir William, who sold that also!His was the leading salon of Paris at that time, and Mme. Tallien was the presiding genius there. Music, dancing, and gambling were again the rage, the women called themselves by mythological names and wore costumes so scanty and transparent that they were scarcely any use either for warmth or decency; marriages, celebrated by a civic functionary, were not considered binding, and were frequently and quickly followed by divorce. Society, if such it could be called, was a wild revel of disorder, licence, debauchery, and corruption; while over all hung, like a cloud, the gloomy figures of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d��Herbois, Bar��re, and their Jacobin followers, ready at any moment to bring back the Terror.

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ONE:��All this is not of good omen,�� said the King, his grandfather, ��and I don��t know how it can have happened that I have made him Duc de Berri; it is an unlucky name.�� [58]

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ONE:Her eldest girl, Caroline, was of a charming disposition, and remarkably beautiful. She inherited her own musical talents and was extremely clever and accomplished. When she was fourteen she was married to a Belgian, the Marquis de Lawoestine; and the wedding was celebrated with great state [404] at the Palais Royal, the Mar��chal Prince de Soubise acting as father to the bridegroom. She gave the young girl a magnificent trousseau, diamonds, plate, porcelaines, &c., and after the ceremony her daughter was left under her care for two years more.

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ONE:ROMEPlauzat was a stately and comfortable, besides being a picturesque abode, with its immense hall hung with crimson damask and family portraits, out of which opened Pauline��s great bedroom, the walls of which were covered with blue and white tapestry worked by M. de Montagu��s grandmother, Laure de Fitzjames, grand-daughter of James II. of England.