s impossible to deny that "his birth
ran strongly against him"--a consideration which elicited from Lady
Shelley the profound remark that it is "strange to search into the
recesses of the human mind."

Lady Shelley herself seems to have been rather a _femme incomprise_. She
had lived much on the Continent, and appreciated the greater deference
paid to a charming and accomplished woman in Viennese and Parisian
society, compared with the boorishness of Englishmen who would not
"waste their time" in paying pretty compliments to ladies which "could
be repaid by a smile." She records her impressions in French, a language
in which she was thoroughly proficient. "Je sais," she says, "qu'en
Angleterre il ne faut pas s'attendre a cultiver son esprit; qu'il faut,
pour etre contente a Londres, se resoudre a se plaire avec la
mediocrite; a entendre tous les jours repeter les memes banalites et a
s'abaisser autant qu'on le peut au niveau des femmelettes avec
lesquelles l'on vit, et qui, pour plaire, affectent plus de frivolite
qu'elles n'ont reellement. Le plaisir de causer nous est defendu."
Nevertheless, however much she may have mentally appreciated the
solitude of a crowd, she determined to adapt herself to her social
surroundings. "C'est un sacrifice," she says, "que je fais a mon Dieu et
a mon devoir comme Anglaise." Impelled, therefore, alike by piety and
patriotism, she cast aside all ideas of leading an eremitic life,
plunged into the vortex of the social world, and mixed with all the
great men and women of the day. Of these the most notable was the Duke
of Wellington.

Lady Shelley certainly possessed one quality which eminently fitted her
to play the part of Boswell to the Duke. The worship of her hero was
without the least mixture of alloy. She had a pheasant, which the Duke
had killed, stuffed, and "added to other souvenirs which ornamented her
dressing-room"; and she records, with manifest pride, that "amongst her
other treasures" was a chair on which he sat upon the first occasion of
his dining with her husband and herself in 1814. It was well to have
that pheasant stuffed, for apparently the Duke, like his great
antagonist, did not shoot many pheasants. He was not only "a very wild
shot," but also a very bad shot. Napoleon, Mr. Oman tells us,[84] on one
occasion "lodged some pellets in Massena's left eye while letting fly at
a pheasant," and then without the least hesitation accused "the faithful
Berthier" of havin