ity. To me there was nothing of that engaging,
captivating manner which I had been taught to expect by many even
of her enemies. She seemed to me to be alive only to literary
quarrels and jealousies; the muscles of her face as she spoke, or
my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily expressed hatred and
anger whenever any not of her own party were mentioned. She is now,
you know, _devote acharnee_. When I mentioned with some enthusiasm
the good Abbe Morellet, who has written so courageously in favor of
the French exiled nobility and their children, she answered in a
sharp voice: "_Oui, c'est un homme de beaucoup d'esprit, a ce qu'on
je crois meme, mais il faut apprendre qu'il n'est pas des Notres._"
My father spoke of Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, and explained
how he had defended her in the Irish House of Commons. Instead of
being pleased and touched, her mind instantly diverged into an
elaborate and artificial exculpation of Lady Edward and herself,
proving, or attempting to prove, that she never knew any of her
husband's plans; that she utterly disapproved of them, at least of
all she suspected of them.

This defense was quite lost upon us, who never thought of
attacking; but Madame de Genlis seems to have been so much used to
be attacked that she has defenses and apologies ready prepared,
suited to all possible occasions. She spoke of Madame de Stael's
_Delphine_ with detestation; of another new and fashionable novel,
_Amelie_, with abhorrence, and kissed my forehead twice because I
had not read it; "_Vous autres Anglaises, vous etes modestes!_"
Where was Madame de Genlis' sense of delicacy when she penned and
published _Les Chevaliers du Cigne?_ Forgive, my dear Aunt Mary.
You begged me to see her with favorable eyes, and I went to see her
after seeing her _Rosiere de Salency_, with the most favorable
disposition, but I could not like her. There was something of
malignity in her countenance and conversation that repelled love,
and of hypocrisy which annihilated esteem; and from time to time I
saw, or thought I saw, through the gloom of her countenance, a
gleam of coquetry.[6] But my father judges much more favorably of
her than I do. She evidently took pains to please him, and he says
he is sure she is a person over whose mind he could ga