her mother’s most distinguished guests. “Everybody addressed her with a compliment or a pleasantry. She answered everything with ease and grace.… The cleverest men were those who took most pleasure in making her talk. They asked what she was reading, recommended new books to her and … talked to her of what she knew, or of what she had yet to learn.” From her tenderest years Germaine wrote _portraits_ and _éloges_. At fifteen she made extracts from the _Esprit de Lois_, with annotations, and about the same time the Abbé Raynal was very anxious that she should contribute to his great work an article on the Revolution of the Edict of Nantes. But before this, when she was only twelve, the effects of such premature training had made themselves visible. Her feelings had been as unnaturally developed as her mind. Already that rich, abundant nature, so impetuous, generous, and fervid, which was at once the highest gift and deepest curse, had begun to reveal itself in an exaggerated sensibility. Praise of her parents moved her to tears; for the little cousin she had an affection amounting to passion; and the mere sight of celebrated people gave her palpitation of the heart. She did not care to be amused. What pleased her best was what pained her most, and her imagination was fed upon the “Clarissa Harlowe” school of novels. By degrees her health began to fail, and at fourteen the collapse was so complete as to cause the most serious alarm. Tronchin was consulted, and prescribed absolute rest from study. This was a cruel blow to Madame Necker. A nature allowed to develop spontaneously, a mind virgin of the pruning-hook, were objects of as much horror to her as if they had been forbidden by Heaven. That her daughter, just at the final moment, when what was doubtless the mere preliminary course of study had been traversed, should be released from bondage and abandoned to her own impetuosity, was well-nigh insupportable. She had no alternative but to resign herself, and therefore, silently and coldly, as was her wont, she accepted the situation. Nevertheless, she was neither reconciled to it, nor felt the same interest in Germaine again. Years afterwards, the bitterness that she had hoarded in her soul betrayed itself in one little phrase. Madame Necker de Sausanne was congratulating her on her daughter’s astonishing powers. “She is nothing,” said Madame Necker, coldly, “nothing to that which I would have made her.”