early and long, for her aged partner soon dropped from her side, beloved
and regretted. George tells us that her grandmother was wont to insist
that an old man can be more agreeable in the marital relation than a
young one, and that M. Dupin de Francueil, elegant, accomplished,
and devoted to her happiness, had in his life left nothing for her
imagination to desire or her heart to regret.

As this lady is one of the heroines of the "Histoire de ma Vie," we
cannot do it justice without lingering a little over her portraiture.
She is described as tall, fair, and of a Saxon type of beauty. Her
manners would seem to have been _de haute école_, and her culture was
on a large and noble scale. Austere in her morals, her faith was the
deistic philosophy of the ante-revolutionary period; but, like other
people of noble mind, instead of making doubt a pretext for license, she
brought up virtue to justify the latitude of her creed, that the solid
results of conscience should entitle her to the free interpretation of
doctrine. She was chaste, benevolent, and sincere. Her mother had been a
singer of merit and celebrity, and she, the daughter, had both inherited
her musical talent, and had received one of those thorough musical
educations which alone make the possession of the art a pleasure and
resource. It must often occur to those who hear our young ladies sing
and play, that the accomplishment is little valued by them, save as an
outward social adornment.

Hence those ambitious and perfectly uninteresting performances with
which we are constantly bored in the fashionable musical world. It is
self-love which gives us those flat, empty _adagios_, those cold,
keen runs and embellishments. Love of the art has more modesty in the
undertaking, and more warmth in the execution. George says that she
has heard all the greatest singers of modern times, but that her