in the house of Madame do Stael when this arrives, it would
perhaps be possible for you to waive the visit to her, by a
compromise, of having something to do for Susy, and so make the
addendum to your stay under her roof. . .

(Fanny Burney to Dr. Burney.)
Mickleham, February 22, '03,
What a kind letter is my dearest father's, and how kindly speedy
! yet it is too true it has given me very uncomfortable feelings.
I am both hurt and astonished at the acrimony of malice; indeed,
I believe all this Party to merit nothing but honour, compassion,
and praise. Madame de Stael, the daughter of M. Necker--the
idolising daughter--of course, and even from the best principles,
those of filial reverence, entered into the opening of the
Revolution just as her father entered into it; but as to her
house having become the centre of revolutionists before the 10th
of August, it was so only for the constitutionalists, who, at
that period, were not only members of the then established
government, but the decided friends of the king. The aristocrats
were then already banished, or wanderers from fear, or concealed
and silent from cowardice; and the jacobins --I need not, after
what I have already related, mention how utterly abhorrent to her
must be that fiend-like set. The aristocrats, however, as you
well observe, and as she has herself told me, hold the
constitutionalists in greater horror than the Convention itself.
This, however, is a violence against justice which cannot, I
hope, be lasting ; and the malignant assertions which persecute
her, all of which she has lamented to us, she imputes equally to
the bad and virulent of both these parties. The intimation
concerning M. de N. was, however, wholly