The Ancient Regime eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 652 pages of information about The Ancient Regime.

The Ancient Regime eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 652 pages of information about The Ancient Regime.

October 5th, shooting near Chatillon; killed 81 head; interrupted by events; go and come on horseback.

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,[55] 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

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The Ancient Regime from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.