Читать книгу The Age of Scandal - T. H. White - Страница 12

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Wraxall was astonished to find that the King of Naples would ‘select his favoured individuals’ to attend him on the chaise percée, observing: ‘Sono ben pransato. Adesso bisogna un buona panchiata.’ The tedious and unpleasant Chevalier de Grammont—like Madame de Sevigné, one of Walpole’s unaccountable enthusiasms from the previous century—had condescended to regard the court of Charles II as ‘neither savage nor barbarous’ (ni grossière ni sauvage). But now the boot was on the other foot. Horace Walpole, who would sit in the middle of the room at French inns, so far as possible from the wainscot, behind which he pretended that he could hear the ‘old fleas talking of the days of Louis XIV’, was disgusted with Versailles. ‘The very footmen ... wait behind their master ... with a red handkerchief about their necks. Versailles, like everything else, is a mixture of parade and poverty.’ ‘There is one [barbarism], alas! I shall never get over—the dirt of this country: It is melancholy after the purity of Strawberry!’

I was giving him [Horace Walpole] a Description of my Entertainment at Madame Eynhouts, and particularly of her continual hawking and spitting about at Dinner time: he assured me it was the same in better Company, and told me that not two Days before, dining at one of the greatest tables in Paris, with a Great Deal of French Nobility, it was the same during the whole Course of their Dinner, and that in particular, a blind Lady of Fashion and great Distinction for her Wit and Understanding (Mme du Deffand), in the Middle of Dinner, while they were talking of the Dauphin’s little Prospect of Recovery, assured the Company, that His Royal Highness had a greater Chance than they were aware of: that she had received a Letter that very Morning from Fontainbleau, giving her an Account that he had happily had a very stinking and foetid stool the evening before, and that in great Abundance ... I should not have dwelt so long upon so filthy a Subject, but to shew the French in their true Light....