France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs
October 6th, leave for Paris at half-past twelve; visit the
Hôtel-de-Ville; sup and rest at the Tuileries.
October 7th nothing; my aunts come and dine.
October 8th, nothing. . .
October 12th, nothing; the stag hunted at Port Royal.
Shut up in Paris, held by the crowds, his heart is always with the
hounds. Twenty times in 1790 we read in his journal of a stag-hunt
occurring in this or that place; he regrets not being on hand. No
privation is more intolerable to him; we encounter traces of his chagrin
even in the formal protest he draws up before leaving for Varennes;
transported to Paris, shut up in the Tuileries, "where, far from finding
conveniences to which he is accustomed, he has not even enjoyed the
advantages common to persons in easy circumstances," his crown to him
having apparently lost its brightest jewel.
VI. Upper Class Distractions.
Other similar lives.--Princes and princesses.--Seigniors of
the court.--Financiers and parvenus.--Ambassadors,
ministers, governors, general officers.
As is the general so is his staff; the grandees imitate their monarch.
Like some costly colossal effigy in marble, erected in the center
of France, and of which reduced copies are scattered by thousands
throughout the provinces, thus does royal life repeat itself, in minor
proportions, even among the remotest gentry. The object is to make a
parade and to receive; to make a figure and to pass away time in good
society.--I find, first, around the court, about a dozen princely
courts. Each prince or princess of the blood royal, like the king, has
his house fitted up, paid for, in whole or in part, out of the treasury,
its service divided into special departments, with gentlemen, pages, and
ladies in waiting, in brief, fifty, one hundred, two hundred, and even
five hundred appointments. There is a household of this kind for the
queen, one for Madame Victoire, one for Madame Elisabeth, one for
Monsieur, one for Madame, one for the Comte d'Artois, and one for the
Comtesse d'Artois. There will be one for Madame Royale, one for the
little Dauphin, one for the Duc de Normandie, all three children of the
king, one for the Duc d'Angoulême, one for the Duc de Berry, both sons
of the Comte d'Artois: children six or seven years of age receive and
make a parade of themselves. On referring to a particular date, in
1771,[2155] I find still another for the Duc d'Orléans, one for the Duc
de Bourbon, one for the Duchesse, one for the Prince de Condé, one for
the Comte de Clermont, one for the Princess dowager de Conti, one for
the Prince de Conti, one for the Comte de la Marche, one for the Duc
de Penthièvre.--Each personage, besides his or her apartment under
the king's roof has his or her chateau and palace with his or her own
circle, the queen at Trianon and at Saint-Cloud, Mesdames at Bellevue,
Monsieur at the Luxembourg and at Brunoy, the Comte d'Artois at Meudon
and at Bagatelle, the Duc d'Orléans at the Palais Royal, at Monceaux, at
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