eeing than her pictures, for though
they are speaking she speaks.

Another visit the sisters paid, which will interest the readers of
Madame de la Rochejaquelin's memoirs of the war in the Vendee:--

In a small bedroom, well furnished, with a fire just lighted, we found
Madame de la Rochejaquelin on the sofa; her two daughters at work, one
spinning with a distaff, the other embroidering muslin. Madame is a fat
woman with a broad, round, fair face and a most benevolent expression,
her hair cut short and perfectly grey as seen under her cap; the rest of
the face much too young for such grey locks; and though her face and
bundled form all squashed on to a sofa did not at first promise much of
gentility, you could not hear her speak or hear her for three minutes
without perceiving that she was well-born and well-bred.

Madame de la Rochejaquelin seems to have confided in Miss Edgeworth.

'I am always sorry when any stranger sees me, _parce que je sais
que je detruis toute illusion. Je sais que je devrais avoir l'air
d'une heroine._' She is much better than a heroine; she is
benevolence and truth itself.

We must not forget the scientific world where Madame Maria was no less
at home than in fashionable literary cliques. The sisters saw something
of Cuvier at Paris; in Switzerland they travelled with the Aragos. They
were on their way to the Marcets at Geneva when they stopped at Coppet,
where Miss Edgeworth was always specially happy in the society of Madame
Auguste de Stael and Madame de Broglie. But Switzerland is not one
of the places where human beings only are in the ascendant; other
influences there are almost stronger than human ones. 'I did not
conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the
beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The
first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life--a
new idea, a new feeling standing alone in the mind.' Miss Edgeworth
presently comes down from her mountain heights and, full of interest,
throws herself into the talk of her friends at Coppet and Geneva, from
which she quotes as it occurs to her. Here is Rocca's indignant speech
to Lord Byron, who was abusing the stupidity of the Genevese. 'Eh!
milord, pourquoi venir vous fourrer parmi ces honnetes gens?' There is
Arago's curious anecdote of Napoleon, who sent for him after the battle
of Waterloo, offering him a large sum of money to accompany him to
Amer