Then the prison was opened, and Frances was free once more.

Page xliv

Johnson, as Burke observed, might have added a striking page to his “the Vanity of Human Wishes, if he had lived to see his little Burney as she went into the palace andas she came out of it.

The pleasures, so long untasted, of liberty, of friendship, of domestic affection, were almost too acute forher shattered frame.  But happy days and tranquil nights soon restored the health which the queen’s toilette and Madame Schwellenberg’s cardtable had impaired.  Kind and anxious faces surrounded the invalid.  Conversation the most polished and brilliant revived her spirits.  Travelling was recommended to her; and she rambled by easy journeys from cathedral to cathedral, and from watering place to watering place.  She crossed the New forest, and visited Stonehenge and Wilton, the cliffs of Lyme, and the beautiful valley of Sidmouth.  Thence she journeyed by Powderham castle, and by the ruins of Glastonbury abbey to Bath, and from Bath, when the winter was approaching, returned well and cheerful to London.  There she visited her old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever.

At this time England swarmed with French exiles, driven from their country by the Revolution.  A colony of these refugees settled at juniper hall, in Surrey, not far from Norbury park, where Mr. Locke, an intimate friend of the Burney family, resided.  Frances visited Norbury, and was introduced to the strangers.  She had strong prejudices against them ; for her Toryism was far beyond, we do not say that of Mr. Pitt, but that of Mr. Reeves ; and the inmates of juniper hall were all attached to the constitution of 1791, and were, therefore, more detested by the royalists of the first emigration than Petion or Marat.  But such a woman as Miss Burney could not long resist the fascination of that remarkable society.  She had lived with Johnson and Windham, with Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Thrale.  Yet she was forced to own that she had never heard conversation before.  The most animated eloquence, the keenest observation, the most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to charm her.  For Madame de Stal was there, and M. de Talleyrand.  There, too, was M. de Narbonne, a noble representative of French aristocracy ; and with M.de Narbonne was his friend and follower General D’Arblay, an honourable and amiable man, with a handsome person, frank soldierlike manners, and some taste for letters.

The prejudices which Frances had conceived against the constitutional royalists of France rapidly vanished.  She listened with rapture to Talleyrand and Madame de Stal, joined with M. D’Arblay in execrating the Jacobins and in weeping for the unhappy Bourbons, took French lessons from him, fell in love with him, and married him on no better provision than a precarious annuity of one hundred pounds.  Page xlv