which Miss Edgeworth "could not regard as
common rooms; they have a classical power over the mind." M. de Stael
told her--

That his mother never gave any work to the public in the form in
which she had originally composed it. She changed the arrangement
and expression of her thoughts with such facility, and was so
little attached to her own first views of the subject, that often a
work was completely remodeled by her while passing through the
press. Her father disliked to see her make any formal preparation
for writing when she was young, so that she used to write often on
the corner of the chimney-piece or on a pasteboard held in her
hand, and always in the room with others, for her father could not
bear her to be out of the room, and this habit of writing without
preparation she preserved ever afterwards.

M. de Stael told me of a curious interview he had with Bonaparte
when he was enraged with his mother, who had published remarks on
his government, concluding with "_Eh bien! vous avez raison aussi.
Je concois qu'un fils doit toujours faire la defense de sa mere,
mais enfin, si monsieur veut ecrire des libelles, il faut aller en
Angleterre. Ou bien s'il cherche la gloire c'est en Angleterre
qu'il faut aller. C'est l'Angleterre, ou la France--il n'y a que
ces deux pays en Europe--dans le monde._"

During her absence abroad Miss Edgeworth had revised the manuscript of
the latter portion of _Rosamond_ and sent it home to press. At the
eleventh hour her publisher discovered that there was not enough
material to complete two volumes, and urged her to supply more copy
without delay. "I was a little provoked," she writes on first hearing
the news, "but this feeling lasted but a moment, and my mind fixed on
what is to be done. It is by no means necessary for me to be at home or
in any particular place to invent or to write." Instantly she set to
work, and in the midst of all social attractions and distractions around
her she wrote the two additional chapters called _The Bracelet of
Memory_ and _Blind Kate_.

Late in October the Misses Edgeworth left Switzerland for Paris,
visiting Lyons on their way. The town had a special interest for Miss
Edgeworth because of her father's early residence there. By the end of
October they were once more settled at Paris in a floor to themselves,
with a _valet de place_ and a _femme de chambr