of trouble, when it excites to stepping out of the common track, these same people regard it no longer but as a disease, and almost as a crime.  I heard continually buzzing about me the commonplaces with which the world suffers itself to be led:  “Has not she plenty of money?  Can she not live well and sleep well in a good house?” Some persons of a higher cast felt that I had not even the certainty of my sad situation, and that it might get worse, without ever getting better.  But the atmosphere which surrounded me counselled repose, because, for the last six months I had not been assailed by any new persecution, and because men always believe that what is, is what will be.  It was in the midst of all these dispiriting circumstances that I was called upon to take one of the strongest resolutions which can occur in the private life of a female.  My servants, with the exception of two confidential persons, were entirely ignorant of my secret; the greatest part of those who visited me had not the least idea of it, and by a single action, I was going to make an entire change in my own life and that of my family.  Torn to pieces by uncertainty, I wandered over the park of Coppet; I seated myself in all the places where my father had been accustomed to repose himself and contemplate nature; I regarded once more these same beauties of water and verdure which we had so often admired together.  I bid them adieu, and recommended myself to their sweet influence.  The monument which encloses the ashes of my father and my mother, and in which, if the good God permits, mine also will be deposited, was one of the principal causes of the regret I felt at banishing myself from the place of my residence; but I found almost always on approaching it, a sort of strength which appeared to me to come from on high.  I passed an hour in prayer before that iron gate which inclosed the mortal remains of the noblest of human beings, and there, my soul was convinced of the necessity of departure.  I recalled the famous verses of Claudian*, in which he expresses the kind of doubt which arises in the most religious minds when they see the earth abandoned to the wicked, and the destiny of mortals as it were floating at the mercy of chance.  I felt that I had no longer the strength necessary to feed the enthusiasm which developed in me whatever good qualities I possessed, and that I must listen to the voice of those of similar sentiments with myself, for the purpose of strengthening my confidence in my own resources, and preserving that self-respect which my father had instilled into me.  In this state of anxiety, I invoked several times the memory of my father, of that man, the Fenelon of politics, whose genius was in every thing opposed to that of Bonaparte; and genius he certainly had, for it requires at least as much of that to put one’s self in harmony with heaven, as to invoke to one’s aid all the instruments which are let loose by the absence of laws divine and human.  I went once