The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, vol 2 | Page 6

a group of children, we
finished our evening by hearing Dumont read, incomparably well, _Les
Chateaux d'Espagne_. In the night we were awakened by the most
horrible female voice, singing, or rather screeching, in the passage--the
voice of a person having a _goître_, and either mad or drunk. There had
been a marriage of country people in the house, and this lady had drunk
a little too much. We heard Dumont's door open, and he silenced or
drove her away.
Next morning we went, on part of the Simplon route which Buonaparte
made, to St. Gingulph, where we spent some hours on the Lake.
Dumont told us he had been there with Rogers, who was so delighted
with its beauty, that instead of one he spent six days there.
Not having met the Moilliets as expected at St. Maurice, we became
very anxious about them; but upon our arrival at Pregny next day,
found them all very quietly there. Mrs. Moilliet's not being very well

kept them at home. Nothing can be kinder than they are to us.
We dined two days after our return to Pregny at Coppet: the Duke and
Duchess de Broglie are now there, and we met M. de Stein, [Footnote:
Carl, Baron Stein, the Minister of Frederick William IV. of Prussia.] a
great diplomatist, and M, Pictet Deodati, of whom Madame de Staël
said, if one could take hold of Pictet Deodati's neckcloth, and give him
one good shaking, what a number of good things would come out!
MALAGNY, DR. MARCET'S, Sept.
We came here last Friday, and have spent our time most happily with
our excellent friend Mrs. Marcet. His children are all so fond of Dr.
Marcet, we see that he is their companion and friend. They have all
been happily busy in making a paper fire-balloon, sixteen feet in
diameter, and thirty feet high. A large company were invited to see it
mount. It was a fine evening. The balloon was filled on the green
before the house. The lawn slopes down to the lake, and opposite to it
magnificent Mont Blanc, the setting sun shining on its summit. After
some heart-beatings about a hole in the top of the balloon, through
which the smoke was seen to issue--an evil omen--it went up
successfully. The sun had set, but we saw its reflection beautifully on
one side of the balloon, so that it looked like a globe half ice, half fire,
or half moon, half sun, self-suspended in the air. It went up exactly a
mile. I say exactly, because Pictet measured the height by an
instrument of a new invention, which I will describe when we meet.
The air here is so clear, that at this height we saw it distinctly.
M. Pictet de Rochemont, brother to our old friend, has taken most kind
pains to translate the best passages from my father's Memoirs for the
_Bibliothèque Universelle_. We were yesterday at his house with a
large party, and met Madame Necker de Saussure--much more
agreeable than her book. Her manner and figure reminded us of our
beloved Mrs. Moutray: she is deaf, too, and she has the same
resignation, free from suspicion, in her expression when she is not
speaking, and the same gracious attention to the person who speaks to
her.

CHATEAU DE COPPET, _Sept. 28_,
8 A.M.
We came here yesterday, and here we are in the very apartments
occupied by M. Necker, opening into what is now the library, but what
was once that theatre on which Madame de Staël used to act her own
Corinne. Yesterday evening, when Madame de Broglie had placed me
next the oldest friend of the family, M. de Bonstettin, he whispered to
me, "You are now in the exact spot, in the very chair where Madame de
Staël used to sit!" Her friends were excessively attached to her. This
old man talked of her with tears in his eyes, and with all the sudden
change of countenance and twitchings of the muscles which mark
strong, uncontrollable feeling.
There is something inexpressibly melancholy, awful, in this house, in
these rooms, where the thought continually recurs, Here Genius _was!_
here was Ambition, Love! all the great struggles of the passions; here
was Madame de Staël! The respect paid to her memory by her son and
daughter, and by M. de Broglie, is touching. The little Rocca, seven
years old, is an odd, cold, prudent, old-man sort of a child, as unlike as
possible to the son you would have expected from such parents. M.
Rocca, brother to the boy's father, is here: handsome, but I know no
more. M. Sismondi and his wife dined here, and three Saladins, father,
mother, and daughter. M. de Staël has promised to show to me
Gibbon's love-letters to his