first time on the Bay of Naples, though she would gladly travel
five hundred leagues to make the acquaintance of a man of talent. On
the borders of the Lake of Geneva, with one of the fairest scenes on
earth expanding before her, she was incessantly pining for 'le
ruisseau de la Rue du Bac'--for the interest and the excitement of a
society which had become the passion of her life.

Her gifts of conversation were very wonderful, and she had a wide
range of sympathies, keen insight into character, and great power of
describing it by a few vivid words. She had, however, no reticence or
reserve, she made many enemies by her unbounded frankness, and she
often fatigued or overwhelmed by her exuberant animal spirits and by
the torrent of her words. At the same time, unlike most great talkers,
she possessed to a very eminent degree the gifts of learning from
others, of grasping the characteristic features of their teaching, of
awakening sympathies, of dispelling bashfulness, and of kindling
latent intellect into a flame. Few women combined so remarkably a
sound and moderate judgment with extreme vividness and impetuosity of
emotion. She admired deeply, and she generally admired wisely; her
first judgments and impulses were almost always generous; and,
although she was subject to violent gusts of passion, she could be
very patient with those she loved. Through her whole life she was the
warmest and most self-sacrificing of friends, and her few antipathies
were singularly devoid of rancour. One of those who knew her best
pronounced her to be 'absolutely incapable of hatred.'

She soon became the most attractive figure in the salon of Madame
Necker, and as the health of her mother declined she became its
central figure. Her rare accomplishments and her position as a great
heiress naturally would have drawn many suitors around her, but in
that age the determined Protestantism of her family was a formidable
barrier. It appears from something that she wrote late in life to a
German correspondent that, when a mere girl, she had come under the
spell of Louis de Narbonne, who asked her hand, and with whom, in
after years, she had relations which caused much scandal and which
greatly coloured her political life. The story that her parents at one
time contemplated a marriage between her and William Pitt, on the
occasion of his visit to France in 1783, was discredited by Lord
Stanhope; but M. d'Haussonville pronounces it to be quite true,