MISS BURNEY'S ADMIRATION OF MADAME DE STAEL.

(Fanny Burney to Dr. Burney.)
Mickleham, February 29, 1793
Have you not begun, dearest sir, to give me up as a lost sheep?
Susanna's temporary widowhood, however, has tempted me on, and
spelled me with a spell I know not how to break. It is long, long
since we have passed any time so completely together; her three
lovely children only knit us the closer. The widowhood, however,
we expect now quickly to expire, and I had projected my return to
my dearest father

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for Wednesday next, which would complete my fortnight here but
some circumstances are intervening that incline me to postpone it
another week. Madame de Stal, daughter of M. Necker, and wife of
the Swedish ambassador to France, is now head of the little
French colony in this neighbourhood. M. de Stael, her husband, is
at present suspended in his embassy, but not recalled and it is
yet uncertain whether the regent Duke of Sudermania will send him
to Paris, during the present horrible Convention, or order him
home. He is now in Holland, waiting for commands. Madame de
Stal, however, was unsafe in Paris, though an ambassadress, from
the resentment owed her by the commune, for having received and
protected in her house various destined victims of the 10th
August and of the 2nd September. She was even once stopped in her
carriage, which they called aristocratic, because of its arms and
ornaments, and threatened to be murdered, and only saved by one
of the worst wretches of the Convention, Tallien, who feared