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A malicious smile distorted her pretty face. Slowly she arose, a dripping ghost in white, and pointing her long, thin fingers in the direction of the Ecouen road she mockingly cried: "There is some one to see your portrait at last, dear Master Painter." And saying this she vanished in the gloom, instantly followed by her agitated mother.
In order to take the Messieurs de Guise by surprise he avoided Paris, and came direct from Ecouen to Corbeil, and from Corbeil to Pithiviers by the valley of the Essonne. "Soldier against soldier, we must leave no chances," he said on the occasion of this bold march.
They were presented by Michael Angelo to Roberto degli Strozzi, because, when the sculptor was ill in 1544, Luigi del Riccio, his friend, nursed him and looked after him in the Strozzi Palace. They were taken to France and offered to the King of France, who gave them to the Connétable de Montmorenci; they were placed by him in Ecouen.
He was always of, uncertain habits, and had four dinners ready for him every day; one at Paris, one at Ecouen, one at Chantilly, and one where the Court was. But the expense of this arrangement was not great; he dined on soup, and the half of a fowl roasted upon a crust of bread; the other half serving for the next day.
'Barbarians like us, observed the Emperor, 'would say la connetable and le connetable. "The Czar inquired into the most minute particulars respecting the establishment of Ecouen, and I felt great pleasure in answering his questions. I recollect having dwelt on several points which appeared to me to be very important, and which were in their spirit hostile to aristocratic principles.
The internal regulations were submitted to him. One of the intended rules, drawn up by Madame Campan, proposed that the children should hear mass on Sundays and Thursdays. "In the summer of 1811," relates Madame Campan, "Napoleon, accompanied by Marie Louise and several personages of distinction, visited the establishment at Ecouen.
Beyond the walls of the mansion of Ecouen, in the village which surrounds it, Madame Campan had taken a small house where she loved to pass a few hours in solitary retirement. There, at liberty to abandon herself to the memory of the past, the superintendent of the imperial establishment became, once more, for the moment, the first lady of the chamber to Marie Antoinette.
They had not perpetually before their eyes the spectacle of human infirmities exhibited at every barrier in France, and treacherous book-stalls did not vomit out upon them in secret the poison of books which taught evil and set passion on fire. This wise school-mistress, moreover, could only at Ecouen preserve a young lady for you spotless and pure, if, even there, that were possible.
Germain and St. Denis. The way seemed open to the enemy. Always obsessed with the idea that the Germans would come from the east the almost fatal error of the French General Staff, Paris had been girdled with forts on that side, from those of Ecouen and Montmorency by the distant ramparts of Chelles and Champigny to those of Sucy and Villeneuve the outer lines of a triple cordon.
When Napoleon read this letter, he said, "Let it be sent to the office of Foreign Affairs; it is an historical document." Madame Campan thus described a visit from the Czar of Russia: "A few days after the battle of Paris the Emperor Alexander came to Ecouen, and he did me the honour to breakfast with me.
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