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Updated: May 14, 2025
But M. de Duras, instead of giving assistance, looked from his coach-window, burst out laughing, and cried out: "What a luxurious horse thus to roll upon Roses!" and with this witticism passed gently on through the mud.
At those functions, such celebrities as the Comtesses d'Egmont and de Brionne, the Marquise de Duras, and the Prince de Rohan were frequent guests. Mme. Geoffrin was shrewd and tactful enough to avoid politics and not to permit discussions of a political nature at her salon—precautions which she observed to keep the government from interfering with her fortune and mode of living.
On the next day we went in a body to the terrace of the chateau. The king was near me with his hat in his hand; the duc de Duras gave me his arm. M. l' abbe waited us in a boat: he flung himself bodily into the water, dressed in a sort of cork-jacket, moved in any direction in the water, drank, ate, and fired off a gun.
They were four in number, the Duke d'Aumont, the Duke of Duras, the Duke of Blacas, the Duke Charles de Damas, and performed their functions in turn a year each. Every four years the King designated those who were to serve during each of the following four years. Thus, the Royal Almanac of 1825 has this notice:
The Queen certainly visited the former governess, as she had done the Duchesse de Duras and many other frequenters of her Court parties; but she made the Duchesse de Polignac's her Court; and all the courtiers of that Court, and, I may say, the great personages of all France, as well as the Ministers and all foreigners of distinction, held there their usual rendezvous; consequently, there was nothing wanting but the guards in attendance in the Queen's apartments to have made it a royal residence suitable for the reception of the illustrious personages that were in the constant habit of visiting these levees, assemblies, balls, routs, picnics, dinner, supper, and card parties.
His wife was a tall creature, as impertinent as he, who wore the breeches, and before whom he dared not breathe. Her effrontery blushed at nothing, and after many gallantries she had linked herself on to M. de Duras, whom she governed, and of whom she was publicly and absolutely the mistress, living at his expense.
The noise which the Queen unavoidably made when she returned very late from the evenings which she spent with the Princesse de Gugmenee or the Duc de Duras, at last annoyed the King, and it was amicably agreed that the Queen should apprise him when she intended to sit up late. He then began to sleep in his own apartment, which had never before happened from the time of their marriage.
Has she not herself told us how she could not get on with the character of Bartley Fallon in Spreading the News, till one day she met a melancholy man by the sea at Duras, who, after describing the crosses he endured at home, said: "But I'm thinking if I went to America, it's long ago I'd be dead. And it's a great expense for a poor man to be buried in America."
It was labour in vain. The king was in too much fear of knowing himself to understand that study: he knew the penetration and severity of his own judgment, and on no account would he exercise it at his own expense. The duc de Duras, although a man of little wit, was yet gay and always lively.
If the soil of the Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it might be so wasted that it would at least furnish no supplies to the Germans. The ironhearted statesman submitted his plan, probably with much management and with some disguise, to Lewis; and Lewis, in an evil hour for his fame, assented. Duras received orders to turn one of the fairest regions of Europe into a wilderness.
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