Status Updates From Dancing to the Precipice: L...

Lucie, telling Félicie that she should not be too upset if her mother rebuffed her, wrote: ‘You must fill your heart with charitable thoughts. Just because she was not a good mother, that is no reason for you not to be a good daughter.’

Ten years of constant war and political turmoil had made the French long for peace and order. Napoleon was a man untainted by the venality of the Directoire, someone who could put both the revolution and its chaotic aftermath to rest. In him, royalists chose to see someone capable of restoring the monarchy; the former Jacobins preferred to believe that he could prevent it.

Children who could not be fed were sometimes smothered. ‘The whole parish is poor,’ wrote one country priest. ‘There are at most twenty households or families who are living decently; all the rest struggle to get by on their wits.’ So endemic was poverty that it had spawned a whole new vocabulary: there were the shameful poor, the indigent, the wretched, the professional beggars and the beggars by necessity.

Perfect companion to Talleyrand. PERFECT.

Falling in love with Talleyrand first by following his mind, now I get to relax in the entire world of 18-19th century France! Her descriptions and asides are glorious! She's talking about the food and the encyclopedias and the architecture. Off to a phenomenal start. And she's already mentioned Talleyrand! Squeeeee