THREE:This, however, neither the Princes of the blood, the nobles, nor the French nation would stand, and the project had to be relinquished; but the rapacity and outrageous arrogance and pretensions of les batards, as they were called, had aroused such irritation and hatred that Louis XV. took care to go into the opposite extreme. Unlike his predecessor, he cared nothing for the children of his innumerable liaisons, which were of a lower and more degraded type than those of his great-grandfather. He seldom recognised or noticed these children, made only a very moderate provision for them, and allowed them to be of no importance whatever.Mme. Le Brun found Lady Hamilton, as she became shortly afterwardsthough extraordinarily beautifulignorant, ill-dressed, without esprit or conversation, ill-natured, and spiteful in her way of talking about other people, the only topic she seemed capable of discussing. She herself enjoyed Naples, as she did every other pleasant episode in her delightful life. From the loggia opening out of her bedroom she looked down into an orange garden; from her windows she could see constantly some picturesque or beautiful scene. The costumes of the washerwomen who gathered round the fountain, peasant girls dancing the tarantella, the fiery torches of the fishermen scattered over the bay at night, all the life and colour and incident of southern life spread like a panorama before her; and often she would go out in a boat by moonlight or starlight upon the calm sea, looking back upon the town rising like an amphitheatre from the waters edge.
He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections
