At last Miss Burney's father was moved to compassion and allowed her to write a letter of resignation. "Still I could not," writes Miss Burney in her diary, "summon courage to present my memorial from seeing the queen's entire freedom from such an expectation. For though I was frequently so ill in her presence that I could hardly stand, I saw she concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers. "At last, with a trembling hand, the paper was delivered. Then came the storm. Mme. Schwellenberg raved like a maniac. The resignation was not accepted. The father's fears were aroused, and he declared, in a letter meant to be shown to the queen, that his daughter must retire. The Schwellenberg raged like a wildcat. A scene almost horrible ensued. "The queen then promised that, after the next birthday, Miss Burney should be set at liberty. But the promise was ill kept; and her Majesty showed displeasure at being reminded of it." At length, however, the prison door was opened, and Frances was free once more. Her health was restored by traveling, and she returned to London in health and spirits. Macaulay tells us that she went to visit the palace, "her _old dungeon, and found her successor already far on the way to the grave, and kept to strict duty, from morning till midnight, with a sprained ankle and a nervous fever_." An ignorant and unlettered woman would doubtless not have found this life in the palace tedious, and our sympathy would not have been aroused for her; for as long as the earth lasts there must be human beings fitted for every station, and it is supposed, till the end of all things, there must be cooks, housemaids, and dining-room servants, which will make it never possible for the whole human family to stand entirely upon the same platform socially and intellectually. And Miss Burney's wretchedness, which calls forth our sympathy, was not because she had to perform the duties of waiting-maid, but because to a gifted and educated woman these duties were uncongenial; and congeniality means _happiness_; uncongeniality, _unhappiness_. CHAPTER XIV. From the sorrows of Miss Burney in the palace--a striking contrast with the menials described in our own country homes--I will turn to another charming place on the James River--Powhatan Seat, a mile below Richmond, which had descended in the Mayo family two hundred years. Here, it was said, the Indian chief Powhatan had lived, and here was shown the veritable stone supposed to have been the one upon which Captain Smith's head was laid, when the Indian princess Pocahontas rescued him.