“Ambition first rose in my mind from the ashes of another passion. Fresh materials, of heterogeneous kinds, altered the colour, and changed the nature of the flame: I should have told you, but narrative is not my forte—I never can remember to tell things in their right order. I forgot to tell you, that when Madame de Staël’s book, ‘Sur la Revolution Française,’ came out, it made an extraordinary impression upon me. I turned, in the first place, as every body did, eagerly to the chapter on England, but, though my national feelings were gratified, my female pride was dreadfully mortified by what she says of the ladies of England; in fact, she could not judge of them. They were afraid of her. They would not come out of their shells. What she called timidity, and what I am sure she longed to call stupidity, was the silence of overawed admiration, or mixed curiosity and discretion. Those who did venture, had not full possession of their powers, or in a hurry showed them in a wrong direction. She saw none of them in their natural state. She asserts that, though there may be women distinguished as writers in England, there are no ladies who have any great conversational and political influence in society, of that kind which, during l’ancien régime, was obtained in France by what they would call their femmes marquantes, such as Madame de Tencin, Madame du Deffand, Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse. This remark stung me to the quick, for my country and for myself, and raised in me a foolish, vain-glorious emulation, an ambition false in its objects, and unsuited to the manners, domestic habits, and public virtue of our country. I ought to have been gratified by her observing, that a lady is never to be met with in England, as formerly in France, at the Bureau du Ministre; and that in England there has never been any example of a woman’s having known in public affairs, or at least told, what ought to have been kept secret. Between ourselves, I suspect she was a little mistaken in some of these assertions; but, be that as it may, I determined to prove that she was mistaken; I was conscious that I had more within me than I had yet brought out; I did not doubt that I had eloquence, if I had but courage to produce it. It is really astonishing what a mischievous effect those few passages produced on my mind. In London, one book drives out another, one impression, however deep, is effaced by the next shaking of the sand; but I was then in the country, for, unluckily for me, Lord Davenant had been sent away on some special embassy. Left alone with my nonsense, I set about, as soon as I was able, to assemble an audience round me, to exhibit myself in the character of a female politician, and I believe I had a notion at the same time of being the English Corinne. Rochefoucault, the dexterous anatomist of self-love, says that we confess our small faults, to persuade the world that we have no large ones. But, for my part, I feel that there are some small faults more difficult to me to confess than any large ones. Affectation, for instance; it is something so little, so paltry, it is more than a crime, it is a ridicule: I believe I did make myself completely ridiculous; I am glad Lord Davenant was not by, it lasted but a short time. Our dear good friend Dumont (you knew Dumont at Florence?) could not bear to see it; his regard for Lord Davenant urged him the more to disenchant me, and bring me back, before his return, to my natural form. The disenchantment was rather rude.
“One evening, after I had been snuffing up incense till I was quite intoxicated, when my votaries had departed, and we were alone together, I said to him, ‘Allow that this is what would be called at Paris, un grand succés.’
“Dumont made no reply, but stood opposite to me playing in his peculiar manner with his great snuff-box, slowly swaying the snuff from side to side. Knowing this to be a sign that he was in some great dilemma, I asked of what he was thinking. ‘Of you,’ said he. ‘And what of me?’ In his French accent he repeated those two provoking lines—
‘New wit, like wine, intoxicates the brain,
Too strong for feeble women to sustain.‘
“‘To my face?’ said I, smiling, for I tried to command my temper.
“‘Better than behind your back, as others do,’ said he.
“‘Behind my back!’ said I; ‘impossible.’
“‘Perfectly possible,’ said he, ‘as I could prove if you were strong enough to bear it.’
“‘Quite strong enough,’ I said, and bade him speak on.
“‘Suppose you were offered,’ said he, ‘the fairy-ring that rendered the possessor invisible, and enabled him to hear every thing that was said, and all that was thought of him, would you throw it away, or put it on your finger?’