I entirely agreed in the wisdom of her advice, though I very much doubted my power to exert sufficient courage to speak, unasked, upon any affair of my own.  You may be sure I resolved to spare poor Madame de la Fite, in my application, if I made it:  “to write, or not to write,” was all I wanted to determine; for the rest, I must run any risk rather than complain of a friend who always means well. . . .

An opportunity offered the next morning, for the queen again commanded me to follow her into her saloon ; and there she was so gentle, and so gracious, that I ventured to speak of Madame de Genlis.

It was very fearfully that I took this liberty.  I dreaded lest she should imagine I meant to put myself under her direction, as if presuming she would be pleased to direct me.  Something, I told her, I had to say, by the advice of Mrs. Delany, which I begged her permission to communicate.  She assented in silence, but with a look of the utmost softness, and yet mixed with strong surprise.  I felt my voice faltering, and I was with difficulty able to go on,-so new to me was it to beg to be heard, who, hitherto, have always been begged to speak.  There is no absolutely accounting for the forcible emotions which every totally new situation and new effort will excite in a mind enfeebled, like mine, by a long succession of struggling agitations.  I got behind her chair, that she might not see a distress she might wonder at:  for it was not this application 407

itself that affected me ; it was the novelty of my own situation, the new power I was calling forth over my proceedings, and the—­O my Susan!—­the all that I was changing from—­relinquishing-of the past—­and hazarding for the future!

With many pauses, and continual hesitation, I then told her that I had been earnestly pressed by Madame de Genlis to correspond with her; that I admired her with all my heart, and, with all my heart, believed all good of her; but that, nevertheless, my personal knowledge of her was too slight to make me wish so intimate an intercourse, which I had carefully shunned upon all occasions but those where my affection as well as my admiration had been interested ; though I felt such a request from such a woman as Madame de Genlis as an honour, and therefore not to be declined without some reason stronger than my own general reluctance to proposals of that sort ; and I found her unhappily, and I really and sincerely believed undeservedly, encircled with such powerful enemies, and accused with so much confidence of having voluntarily provoked them, that I could not, even in my own mind, settle if it were right to connect myself with her so closely, till I could procure information more positive in her favour, in order to answer the attacks of those who asperse her,(216) and who would highly blame me for entering into a correspondence with a character not more unquestionably known to me.  I had been desirous to wait, suspended, till this fuller knowledge might be brought about; but I was now solicited into a decision, by M. Argant, who was immediately going to her, and who must either take her a letter from me or show her, by taking none, that I was bent upon refusing her request.