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

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 Sta?l 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 _Biblioth��que 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 Sta?l 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 Sta?l 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 Sta?l! 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 Sta?l has promised to show to me Gibbon's love-letters to his grandmother, ending regularly with "Je suis, mademoiselle, avec les sentimens qui font le d��sespoir de ma vie," etc.
M. de Bonstettin--Gray the poet's friend--told me that in Sweden, about thirty years ago, he saw potatoes in the corner of a gentleman's garden as a curiosity. "They tell me, sir," said the gentleman, "that in some