The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, vol 2 | Page 5

half-hour Dumont, impatient at our losing our way, had been saying she must be too old to receive us. She was very old thirty years ago; she must be _quatre-vingt_, at least: at last it came to _quatre-vingt-dix_. This lady did not look above fifty. She came up to the carriage as it stopped, and asked whom we wished to see. The moment I saw her eyes, I knew it was Madame de Montolieu, and stooping down from the open carriage I put into her hand the note of introduction and our card. She never opened the note, but the instant her eye had glanced upon the card, she repeated the name with a voice of joyful welcome. I jumped out of the carriage, and she embraced me so cordially, and received my sisters so kindly, and M. Dumont so politely, that we were all at ease and acquainted and delighted before we were half-way upstairs. While she went into the ante-chamber for a basket of peaches, I had time to look at the prints hung in the little drawing-room: they had struck me the moment we came in as scenes from Caroline de Lichfield. Indifferent, old-fashioned, provoking figures, Caroline and Count Walstein in the fashions of thirty years ago.
When Madame de Montolieu returned, she bade me not look at them; "but I will tell you how they came to be here." They had been given to her by Gibbon: he was the person who published Caroline de Lichfield. She had written it for the entertainment of an aunt who was ill: a German story of three or four pages gave her the first idea of it. "I never could invent: give me a hint, and I can go on and supply the details and the characters." Just when Caroline de Lichfield was finished, Gibbon became acquainted with her aunt, who showed it to him: he seized upon the MS., and said it must be published. It ran in a few months through several editions; and just when it was in its first vogue, Gibbon happened to be in London, saw these prints, and brought them over to her, telling her he had brought her a present of prints from London, but that he would only give them to her on condition that she would promise to hang them, and let them always hang, in her drawing-room. After many vain efforts to find out what manner of things they were, Gibbon and curiosity prevailed; she promised, and there they hang.
She must have been a beautiful woman: she told me she is seventy: fine dark, enthusiastic eyes, a quickly varying countenance, full of life, and with all the warmth of heart and imagination which is thought to belong only to youth.
We went into a wooden gallery reaching from one side of the house to the other, at one end of which was a table, where she had been writing when we arrived. We often took leave, but were loth to depart. Dumont luckily asked if she could direct us to a fine old chateau in the neighbourhood, which we had been told was particularly well worth seeing--Viernon. "It is my brother's," she said, and she would go with us and show it. The carriage was sent round to the high road, and we went by a walk along a river, romantically beautiful. Just as we came to a cascade and a wooden bridge, a little pug dog came running down, and the Baron and Madame de Polier appeared. Madame de Montolieu ran on to her brother, and explained who we were. Madame is an Englishwoman, and, to my surprise, I found she was niece to my father's old friend, Mr. Mundy of Markeaton. We were all very sorry to part with Madame de Montolieu; however, we returned to Lausanne, and Dumont in the evening read out _Le Somnambule_--very laughable when so well read.
PREGNY, _Sept. 20_.
Next day beautiful drive to Vevay, as you know. After visiting Chillon, where Lord Byron's name and coat of arms are cut upon Bonnivar's pillar, I read the poem again, and think it most sublime and pathetic. How can that man have perverted so much feeling as was originally given to him!
Have you been at St. Maurice? If you have not, I cannot give you an idea of the surprise and delight we felt at the first sight of the view going down through the archway! But what a miserable town! After Fanny had sketched from the window of the inn 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 _go?tre_, and either mad