Another friend, and apparently a very sincere one, of Madame Necker, was Madame d’Houdetôt. Madame Necker seems to have accepted that interesting woman just as she was, including her relations with St. Lambert, whom the letters exchanged between the two ladies mention quite naturally. The affection which she felt for the mother was extended by Madame D’Houdetôt to the little daughter, and there are letters of hers extant describing visits which she had paid to Germaine, while Madame Necker was at Spa or Mont Doré for her health. They were written to relieve the natural pain of absence on the parents’ part, and are full of praises of the child, of her engaging ways, her air of health, and her magnificent eyes. CHAPTER III. GIRLHOOD AND MARRIAGE. In the brilliant world in which she awoke, Germaine very soon found her place. It is a very familiar little picture that which we have of her, seated on a low stool beside her mother at the receptions, and fixing on one speaker after another her great, astonished eyes. Soon, very soon, she began to join in the conversation herself, and by the time she was ten or eleven years old she had grown into a person whose opinion was quite seriously consulted. Some of the friends of the house, Marmontel, Raynal and others, enchanted to have a new shrine in the same temple at which to worship, talked to her, wrote verses to her, and laid at her young feet some of the homage up to then exclusively devoted to Madame Necker. That lady began by being enchanted at Germaine’s amazing powers, and set to work to educate her with characteristic thoroughness and pedantry. Everything that was strongest in her, family pride, the sense of maternal authority, the love of personal influence, the passion for training, seemed to find their opportunity in the surprising daughter whom Heaven had given her. She drove the child to study with unrelenting ardor, teaching her things beyond her age, and encouraging her at the same time further to exercise her intelligence by listening to conversations on all sorts of subjects. The consequence was that at eleven Germaine’s conversational powers were already stupendous. On being introduced to a child of her own age, a little Mademoiselle Hüber, who was her cousin, she amazed her new acquaintance by the questions she put to her. She asked what were her favorite lessons; if she knew any foreign languages; if she often went to the theatre. The little cousin confessing to having profited but rarely by such an amusement, Germaine was horror-stricken, but promised that henceforward the deficiency should be remedied, adding that on their return from the theatre they should both proceed to write down the subject of the pieces performed, with suitable reflections; that being, she said, her own habit. In the evening of this first day’s acquaintance, Mademoiselle Hüber, already sufficiently awe-struck, one must think, was further a witness to the attention paid to Germaine by