never opened the note, but the instant her eye had glanced upon the
card, she repeated the name with a voice of joyful welcome. I jumped out
of the carriage, and she embraced me so cordially, and received my
sisters so kindly, and M. Dumont so politely, that we were all at ease
and acquainted and delighted before we were half-way upstairs. While she
went into the ante-chamber for a basket of peaches, I had time to look
at the prints hung in the little drawing-room: they had struck me the
moment we came in as scenes from _Caroline de Lichfield_. Indifferent,
old-fashioned, provoking figures, Caroline and Count Walstein in the
fashions of thirty years ago.

When Madame de Montolieu returned, she bade me not look at them; "but I
will tell you how they came to be here." They had been given to her by
Gibbon: he was the person who published _Caroline de Lichfield_. She had
written it for the entertainment of an aunt who was ill: a German story
of three or four pages gave her the first idea of it. "I never could
invent: give me a hint, and I can go on and supply the details and the
characters." Just when _Caroline de Lichfield_ was finished, Gibbon
became acquainted with her aunt, who showed it to him: he seized upon
the MS., and said it must be published. It ran in a few months through
several editions; and just when it was in its first vogue, Gibbon
happened to be in London, saw these prints, and brought them over to
her, telling her he had brought her a present of prints from London, but
that he would only give them to her on condition that she would promise
to hang them, and let them always hang, in her drawing-room. After many
vain efforts to find out what manner of things they were, Gibbon and
curiosity prevailed; she promised, and there they hang.

She must have been a beautiful woman: she told me she is seventy: fine
dark, enthusiastic eyes, a quickly varying countenance, full of life,