Aussi quelqu'un qui veut vivre avec eux ne doit être ni triste ni rêveur, mais avoir toujours le visage riant.

Hortense devoted herself with iron diligence, and untiring enthusiasm, to her studies, which consisted, not only in the acquisition of languages, in music, and drawing, history and geography, but still more in the mastering the so-called bon ton and that aristocratic savoir vivre of which Madame Campan was a very model.

Her father, Antoine, son of Jean d'Estrées, a valiant soldier under five kings, was a man of pleasure, who drank and sang his way through life, preferring Cupid to Mars and the joie de vivre to the call of duty.