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Updated: May 23, 2025
They were really not residents, the first being Governor of Odessa and the other always travelling on military inspections, but it was different with a host of other countrymen of mine. For instance, I made acquaintance with the amiable and dear good Countess Ducrest de Villeneuve.
On learning that I was in Moscow, he came to see me, and invited me to dinner with my friends, the Countess Ducrest de Villeneuve and her husband. We found an immense palace, ornamented externally with royal magnificence. Every room through which we passed was more handsomely furnished than the one preceding, and in most of them was a picture of the master of the house, either full or half length.
Nothing now remained for the prince but exile and poverty. In the month of April, 1793, the duke, assuming the name of Mr. Corby, and the appearance of an English traveller, accompanied only by a servant and his aid-de-camp, Cæsar Ducrest, commenced travelling in Germany.
At this time I was doing a picture of Countess Strogonoff's daughter, so that by the end of ten or twelve days I had begun six portraits, without counting the likeness of the good and genial Mme. Ducrest de Villeneuve, whom I was charmed to meet again in Moscow, and who was so pretty that I insisted on painting her.
I decided to send to good Mme. Ducrest de Villeneuve. She rushed over at once, and took me off to her house, where I remained a fortnight, during which the dear woman showered attentions upon me which I shall never forget. When I had concluded to go home, I first went with M. Ducrest de Villeneuve to examine the premises.
Ducrest, the niece of the Countess de Genlis, Mdlle. d'Avrillon, General Lafayette, in a word, all who have written about that period who knew Josephine, bear similar testimony to her amiable disposition and her superior virtues. In the same manner the man for whom, as Mdlle. Ducrest says, "she would gladly have given her life," Napoleon, in his conversations with his confidential friends at St.
"'Ah, my goodness! my shawl has also been torn; that is precisely why I bought it, for I obtained it on that account somewhat cheaper. No one, however, had a larger and more choice selection of these cashmere shawls than Josephine. Mdlle. Ducrest relates that the deceased empress had more than one hundred and fifty of the most magnificent and costly cashmere shawls.
M. Ducrest de Villeneuve came for me in a sledge, and it was so cold that my forehead was quite frozen. I exclaimed in terror, "I shall be able to think no more!" M. de Villeneuve hurried me into a shop, where my forehead was rubbed with snow, and this remedy, employed by the Russians in all similar cases, soon banished the cause of my despair.
Pensions became a serious drain on the revenue and rapidly grew to over 50 millions a year at the end of the reign of Louis XVI. They were not infrequently granted for ridiculous or scandalous reasons, as in the case of Ducrest, hairdresser to the eldest daughter of the Comtesse d'Artois, who was granted an annual pension of 1,700 francs on her death; the child was then twelve months old; or that of a servant of the actress Clairon, who was brought into the Oeuil de Boeuf one morning to tell Louis XV a doubtful story about his mistress; the King laughed so much that he ordered the fellow to be put down for a pension of 600 francs!
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