FORE:Speak lower, implored the Chevalier. Are you mad?Nothing but reforms were talked of when Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette came to the throne; but of course everything proposed excited the opposition and ridicule of one party or the other.
FORE:From this time began her brilliant career. Essentially a woman of the world, delighting in society and amusement, though always praising the pleasures of solitude and retirement, she entered the household of the Duchesse dOrlans, wife of the infamous Philippe-galit, and while constantly declaiming against ambition managed to get all her relations lucrative posts at the Palais Royal, and married one if not both her daughters to rich men of rank with notoriously bad reputations.With a few more words of mingled criticism and compliment, he bowed slightly and turned again to M. Rivarol.
FORE:[319]During the latter part of the reign of Louis XV. the rule of perpetual court dress at Marly was given up, and when Louis XVI. came to the throne he tried, but without success, to discourage the gambling, which he hated; but what Marie Antoinette disliked was the stiffness, fatigue, and restraint of these journeys, and she insisted that at Trianon, which the King had given her, she should be free from the [395] intolerable gne of the etiquette which the last two reigns had so increased as to be an intolerable burden, in former centuries unknown at the court of France.
THREE:The Comte de Provence did not emigrate so soon. He had been more inclined to liberal ideas and was less unpopular than the Comte dArtois. It was not until the time of the unfortunate attempt on the royal family that he also resolved to escape, and his plans, being well-arranged and properly carried out, succeeded perfectly.
THREE:[220]Louis XIV., to whom the idea of the people allowing the King to do anything he chose must have appeared ludicrous, replied that their love for their King would, indeed, be excessive if they would not bear him out of their sight, and ended by saying
