It was an astonishing life! There lies behind it the story of her uncle Curtius, a Swiss who left medical practice in the middle of the 18th century and took to modelling in wax. It was a taste which had grown upon him from his habit of modelling parts of the human body for the purposes of his profession. He extended it to portraits and at last he abandoned medicine for his new art. He had firmly established himself in it and had already been taken up by members of the French Royal Family who had visited Switzerland, when under their protection he left for Paris. And there his sister, Madame Grosholtz, and her child, then five or six years old, joined him. There she learnt her uncle’s trade and thence in her twentieth year she went to live at Versailles as a sort of companion to Madame Elizabeth, Louis XVI’s sister, a girl about four years older than herself. She was the close friend and companion of the princess right up to the moment of the Revolution. Madame Elizabeth like her brother had a delight in manual work. With her it took the form of modelling under the guidance of Marie Grosholtz and it was these nine years that formed the character and that remained the liveliest memory throughout all the very long life that this remarkable woman was to live. It would be interesting to discover (I know of no such document that could tell me, but there must be some) whether the young companion whom Madame Elizabeth thus took under her protection, and to whom she thus gave a unique opportunity for the observation of contemporary life, was in race German or French. Berne would seem to be the origin of the family, and the uncle’s Latin name and the family name of his brother-in-law point to German origin. All his associations on the other hand were French, and when he came to Paris it was hardly as a foreigner. The story reads as though they were French-speaking on their arrival. Perhaps in some future edition of the work this point will be settled. It is one of considerable moment to our judgment of the art. It was a moment when the connection between Switzerland and French society was very close. It was to Switzerland that Voltaire had retired. It was from Switzerland that the genius of Rousseau proceeded. The unfortunate Necker, with his caution and his avarice, played his great part in the early Revolution as a Swiss. To Switzerland also he went back when he had failed--and there, by the way, in his retirement we have an amusing picture of him listening to the daily recital of the news from Paris as the Revolution proceeded, wagging his head solemnly, and perpetually saying, “I told you so.” Madame de Staël, his famous daughter, whom Pitt so much desired to marry for her money, and whom Napoleon so hated, was thoroughly Swiss. She shows it in every line of her writing. She is from the heart of Geneva in her traditions and ideas.