" A mid all these pleasures", wrote Lucie de la Tour du Pin (pictured above) in her memoirs, "we were laughing and dancing our way to the precipice." Hence the title of Caroline Moorehead's excellent new book. The pleasures were the extraordinary extravagance of the French aristocracy during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The fall from the precipice meant the storming of the Bastille in 1789, followed by the revolutionary "Terror" of Robespierre and then by the Napoleonic wars that consumed Europe for almost two decades.rnMuch the same territory is covered by Flora Fraser in her biography of Napoleon's young sister, Pauline. Yet the two women were hardly alike. Born Lucie-Henriette Dillon in Paris's fashionable rue du Bac and descendant of French and Anglo-Irish aristocrats, Lucie was a woman of intellect, culture and learning. Unusually, in an age of arranged marriages and extramarital affairs, she had a faithful 50 years of marriage to Frederic-Seraphin, Marquis de la Tour du Pin Gouvernet. By contrast, Pauline, her Corsican childhood spent in the relatively modest Bonaparte household in Ajaccio, was a spoilt, sexually promiscuous airhead. Her redeeming feature, apart from a beauty acknowl-rnedged by all, was a certain courage: she insisted on accompanying her first husband, General Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, on a hazardous posting in Saint-Domingue (later to become Haiti). She alone of all Napoleon's siblings was willing to join his exile on Elba-and begged, to no avail, to be with him in his final days on remote Saint Helena.
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机译：露西·德拉图尔·杜平（Lucie de la Tour du Pin）在回忆录中写道：“所有这些乐趣中，有一半是我们在通往悬崖峭壁的路上欢笑和跳舞。”因此，Caroline Moorehead的优秀新书的书名。这是路易十六和玛丽·安托瓦内特（Marie Antoinette）统治期间法国贵族的极尽奢华。从悬崖上坠落意味着1789年攻占了巴士底狱，随后是革命性的罗伯斯庇尔“恐怖”，接着是吞噬欧洲近二十年的拿破仑战争。rn弗洛拉·弗雷泽（Flora Fraser）在其传记《拿破仑的妹妹波琳。然而，这两个女人几乎没有相似之处。露西（Lucie）露西（Lucie-Henriette Dillon）出生于巴黎时尚的巴克街（rue du Bac），是法国和盎格鲁-爱尔兰贵族的后裔，她是一个有知识，文化和学习能力的女人。与众不同的是，在一个包办婚姻和婚外恋的时代，她与托马斯·杜·古维内侯爵弗雷德里克·塞拉芬（Frederic-Seraphin）有着忠实的结婚50年。相比之下，波琳（Pauline）的科西嘉人童年时光是在阿雅克修（Ajaccio）相对温和的波拿巴（Bonaparte）家庭中度过的，是个被宠坏，性交的空头。除了所有人都认可的美丽外，她的救赎功能还具有一定的勇气：她坚持陪同她的第一任丈夫维克托·伊曼纽尔·勒克莱尔（Victor Emmanuel Leclerc）将军，在圣多明格（后来成为海地）进行危险的职务。她一个人，所有拿破仑的兄弟姐妹，都愿意加入他在厄尔巴岛的流亡生活，并恳求在遥远的圣赫勒拿岛上度过最后的日子与他在一起。
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