her mistress with clever and stimulating talk such as her Majesty loved. No retiring pension had been asked for in the petition for leave to resign, and when the subject was mentioned by the Queen, the petitioner hastened to disavow all claim and expectation of that kind. She found, however, that the question of what the occasion demanded had been already considered and decided. Though the term of service had been short, the character of the servant, and the notorious failure of her health, made it imperative that she should receive some provision. The Queen therefore announced her intention of continuing to her second Robe-Keeper in retirement one-half of the annual salary which had been paid to her in office. ‘It is but her due,’ said the King. ‘She has given up five years of her pen.’[107] Two days after this matter was settled, Miss Burney took leave of the Royal Family. Emotional as one of her own heroines, she could not control her feelings in bidding farewell to the Queen, and was unable even to look at the King when he came to say ‘Good-bye.’ She quitted the Court on July 7, 1791, having been a member of the royal house-hold for five years all but ten days. Burke recalled the satisfaction with which he had hailed her appointment; and, owning that he had never been more mistaken in his life, observed that the story of those five years would have furnished Johnson with another vivid illustration for his ‘Vanity of Human Wishes.’ ----- Footnote 102: “His coffin was re-opened at the request of the Jessamy Bride, that a lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwynn’s possession when she died, after nearly seventy years.”—Forster’s “Goldsmith.” Footnote 103: James, seventh Earl of Salisbury, was advanced in August, 1789, to the title of Marquis. Footnote 104: In 1785, Mr. Pitt introduced an increase in the tax paid on men-servants, when they were kept by bachelors. Footnote 105: Diary, vol. ii., p. 581. Footnote 106: Macaulay asserts that, shortly after her release, Miss Burney “visited 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.” This is a strange misstatement. Mademoiselle Jacobi had leave of absence to nurse her sprain: it was not “in the old dungeon” that Miss Burney saw her on the occasion referred to, but in a small room at Brompton, where she was sitting with her leg on bolsters, and unable to put her foot to the ground. Fanny, in January, 1792, took a turn of duty at St. James’s, by the Queen’s request, because “Mademoiselle Jacobi was still lame.” Diary, vol. iii., pp. 385-87. However, we read afterwards that, towards the end of 1797, Mademoiselle Jacobi “retired to Germany, ill and dissatisfied with everything in England.” She, as well as Miss Burney, received a pension. Footnote 107: Memoirs, iii. 118 n. -----