he Palais-Royal, I was at the Jacobins, returned to Bellechasse,
after supper went to my friend's. I remained with her alone; she
treated me with an infinite kindness; I left, the happiest man in the
world." Such language speaks for itself.

No sons of a nobleman ever received a finer, more typically modern
education than did her pupils. She was, possibly, the first teacher to
use the natural method system, teaching German, English, and Italian
by conversation. The boys were compelled to act, in the park, the
voyages of Vasco da Gama; in the dining room the great historical
tableaux were presented; in the theatre, built especially for them,
they acted all the dramas of the _Theatre d'Education_. She taught
them how to make portfolios, ribbons, wigs, pasteboard work, to
gild, to turn, and to do carpentering. They visited museums and
manufactories, during which expeditions they were taught to observe,
criticise, and find defects. This was the first step taken in France
in the eighteenth century toward a modern education. Although it was
superficial, in consequence of its great breadth, yet this education
inculcated manliness and courage.

In 1778 Mme. de Genlis published her moral teachings in _Adele et
Theodore_, a work which created quite a little talk at the time, but
which eventually brought upon her the condemnation of the philosophers
and Encyclopaedists, because in it she opposed liberty of conscience.
When, on the occasion of the first communion of the Duc de Valois,
she wrote her _Religion Considered as the Only True Foundation of
Happiness and of True Philosophy_, all the Palais-Royal place hunters,
philosophers, and her political enemies, in a mass, opposed and
ridiculed her. Rivarol declared that she had no sex, that heaven had
refused the magic of talent to her productions, as it had refused the
charm of innocence to her childhood.

One of the best portraits of her is in the memoirs of the Baroness
d'Oberkirch (it was she who disturbed Mme. de Genlis and the Duc
d'Orleans while they were walking in the gardens one night):

"I did not like her, in spite of her accomplishments and the charm of
her conversation; she was too systematic. She is a woman who has laid
aside the flowing robes of her sex for the costume of a pedagogue.
Besides, nothing about her is natural; she is constantly in an
attitude, as it were, thinking that her portrait--physical or
moral--is being taken by someone. One of the great follie