CHAP. VII.

1792-1795.


The original plan of Mary, respecting her residence in France, had no
precise limits in the article of duration; the single purpose she had in
view being that of an endeavour to heal her distempered mind. She did
not proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, to
some friends who saw her immediately before her departure, she spoke
merely of an absence of six weeks.

It is not to be wondered at, that her excursion did not originally seem
to produce the effects she had expected from it. She was in a land of
strangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power of
receiving and communicating ideas with facility in the language of the
country. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she had
been invited, but the master of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent at
the time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surrounded
only with servants. The gloominess of her mind communicated its own
colour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series of
Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which she
forwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of her
posthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and it
is, as she justly remarks, tinged with the saturnine temper which at
that time pervaded her mind.