O, little does she know how tenderly at this moment I could run again into her arms, so often opened to receive me with a cordiality I believed inalienable. And it was sincere then, I am satisfied: pride, resentment of disapprobation, and consciousness of unjustifiable proceedings—these have now changed her: but if we met, and she saw and believed my faithful regard, how would she again feel all her own return!
Well, what a dream am I making!
Jan. 11.—Upon this ever-interesting subject, I had to-day a very sweet scene with the queen. While Mrs. Schwellenberg and myself were both in our usual attendance at noon, her majesty inquired of Mrs. Schwellenberg if she had yet read any of the “Letters”?
“No,” she answered, “I have them not to read.”
I then said she had been so obliging as to lend them to me, to whom they were undoubtedly of far greater personal value.
“That is true,” said the queen; “for I think there is but little in them that can be of much consequence or value to the public at large.”
“Your majesty, you will hurt Miss Burney if you speak about that; poor Miss Burney will be quite hurt by that.”
The queen looked much surprised, and I hastily exclaimed, “O, no!—not with the gentleness her majesty names it.”
Mrs. Schwellenberg then spoke in German; and, I fancy, by the names she mentioned, recounted how Mr. Turbulent and Mr. Fisher had “driven me out of the room.”
The queen seemed extremely astonished, and I was truly vexed at this total misunderstanding; and that the goodness she has exerted upon this occasion should seem so little to have succeeded. But I could not explain, lest it should seem to reproach what was meant as kindness in Mrs. Schwellenberg, who had not yet discovered that it was not the subject, but her own manner of treating it, that was so painful to me.