Read Parrot and Olivier in America for Free Online

in white lawn from head to toe, pleated beyond perfection, her long floating sleeves held with flocks of white silk ribbons. She was an angel, a noble princess, with a long and lovely neck, her artful curls twisting down each cheek, her white bonnet decked with live bouquets, which may have had the rather prosaic purpose of disguising the odors of the street.
    The servants, crowded like geese inside the entrance, applauded.
    This shocked the comtesse clearly. She stopped on the third-to-last step and her entire forehead erupted in a frown of disapproval while her dark eyes shone in undiluted triumph. In this style she ran the gauntlet of her audience and I behind her, still clutching my letter to the Abbe de La Londe. Through the gates I beheld a crowd of men of all sorts wearing white cockades, and women too, some very rough. My mother, not knowing whether to acknowledge them or no, wrapped her shoulders with a shawl of fleur-de-lys, and this simple action raised another cry.
    "Vive le roi," they cried.
    "In, in," my mother hissed.
    I jumped into the dreaded Polignac monster and she followed quickly after me. "Vive le roi," she whispered in my ear, brushing my cheek with the fresh blooms in her hat. " Vive le roi , my treasure." And so we rolled along the rue Saint-Dominique to the rue de Rivoli where we called on Mme de Chateaubriand. M. de Chateaubriand was not at home but many other aristocrats were gathered around the dining table which was stacked high with papers bound with bright green printer's cord. Even as we entered these cords were cut and the pamphlets divided between la Marquise de La Tour du Pin and Mme de Duras and Mme Dulauloy and many others whose names I did not know, although I do believe Mme de Stael was of the party, but in any case we all rushed out onto the rue de Rivoli, not to our many waiting carriages but down along the street so the coachmen followed us, at what you might have called a funereal pace, and we, in shining white, spread like a flock of splendid birds, rare flamingos perhaps, out across the boulevards and squares down from the faubourg Saint-Germain into the faubourg Saint-Antoine, giving away M. de Chateaubriand's pamphlet which, at the time, I assumed to be some sort of announcement of the king's return. In fact it was a pamphlet written by M. de Chateaubriand, and it had a very great impact on the population as it legitimized the restoration.
    Louis XVIII later said that Of Bonaparte and the Bourbons was worth a whole regiment to him. It never did occur to Chateaubriand that he had been mercilessly flattered, but in that he is no worse than every other writer ever born.
    Dear Little Bebe, I wish you a good day. I am going to tell you something. I am to have a new suit for His Majesty's visit. The statue on the place Vendome has just been knocked down and they have put in its place a white flag with fleurs-de-lys on it.
    Goodbye, little Bebe, I kiss you with all my heart. My friend Thomas is now here with all his sisters. He asks after you and demands you come to join us very soon.
    Olivier

VI
    THE GATES WERE REPAIRED and painted. There were new curtains, cream and silver, luminous by candlelight, which had been sewn and hung in just two days, one of them a Sunday. Our horses were lodged with the young nephew of the duc de Berry, who was a neighbor, and the entire rue Saint-Dominique echoed with hammer blows as our stables were rebuilt by a group of Marseillais who ate so gluttonously that a cook was engaged to deal with their unreasonable demands. Every day the king was expected in Paris. Every day he was delayed until, finally, my sleep was quite destroyed by nervous expectation.
    "Why does the king not come to Paris?" I asked.
    "He is not only king of Paris, Master de Garmont. He is king of all the French."
    "Then he is the king of murderers!" I cried, and was dispatched to my room where Odile was ordered to prevent me writing letters to Thomas. I doubtless made an appalling