morals, her conduct, and her talents are
scrutinized in such a manner that the reputation of her genius is fully
counterbalanced by the publicity given to her defects. Besides, my
happiness was my chief concern, and I never saw the public intermeddle
with that of any one without marring it.... During twelve years of my
life I shared in my husband's labors as I participated in his repasts,
because one was as natural to me as the other. If any part of his works
happened to be quoted in which particular graces of style were
discovered, or if a flattering reception was given to any of the
academic trifles, which he took a pleasure in transmitting to the
learned societies, of which he was a member, I partook of his
satisfaction without reminding him that it was my own composition.... If
during his administration an occasion occurred for the expression of
great and striking truths, I poured forth my whole soul upon the paper,
and it was but natural that its effusions should be preferable to the
laborious teemings of a secretary's brain. I loved my country. I was an
enthusiast in the cause of liberty. I was unacquainted with any interest
or any passions that could enter into competition with that enthusiasm;
my language, consequently, could not but be pure and pathetic, as it was
that of the heart and of truth.... Why should not a woman act as
secretary to her husband without depriving him of any portion of his
merit? It is well known that ministers can not do every thing
themselves; and, surely, if the wives of those of the old governments,
or even of the new, had been capable of making draughts of letters, of
official dispatches, or of proclamations, their time would have been
better employed than in intriguing first for one paramour and then for
another." "An old coxcomb, enamored of himself, and vain of displaying
the slender stock of science he has been so long in acquiring, might be
in the habit of seeing me ten years together without suspecting that I
could do more than cast up a bill or cut out a shirt."

Suitors, she writes, came numerously from her fifteenth year. She
marches them off _en masse_ in her memoirs. As is the custom in France,
the first overture was made to her father, and usually by letter. Her
music teacher was her first devotee. He was followed by her dancing
master, who, as a propitiatory preparation had a wen cut out of his
cheek; then came a wealthy butcher; then a man of rank; then a dissolute
phy