longer regrets the
exile to which he has been forced to submit for her sake. Wonderful,
wonderful Providence! I view its workings with renewed awe every day.

* * * * *

SEPTEMBER 5, 1795.

I have been from home. I have been on a visit to New York. I have tasted
of change, of brightness, of free and cheerful living, and I can settle
down now in this old and fast-decaying inn with something else to think
about than ruin and fearful retribution.

I have been visiting Madame De Fontaine. She wished me to come, I think,
that I might see how amply her married life had fulfilled the promise of
her courtship days. Though she and her noble husband live in peaceful
retirement, and without many of the appurtenances of wealth, they find
such resources of delight in each other's companionship that it would be
hard for the most exacting witness of their mutual felicity to wish them
any different fate, or to desire for them any wider field of social
influence.

The marquis--I shall always call him thus--has found a friend in General
Washington, and though he is never seen at the President's receptions,
or mingles his voice in the councils of his adopted country, there are
evidences constantly appearing of the confidence reposed in him by this
great man, which cannot but add to the exile's contentment and
satisfaction.

Honora has developed into a grand beauty. The melancholy which her
unhappy memories have necessarily infused into her countenance have
given depth to her expression, which was always sweet, and frequently
touching. She looks like a queen, but like a queen who has known not
only grief, but love. There is nothing of despair in her glance, rather
a lofty hope, and when her affections are touched, or her enthusiasm
roused, she smiles with such a heavenly brightness in her countenance,
that I think there is no fairer woman in the world, as I am assured
there is none worthier.

Her husband agrees with me in this opinion, and is so happy that she
said to me one day:

"I sometimes wonder how my heart succeeds in holding the joy which
Heaven has seen fit to grant me. In it I read the forgiveness of God for
the unutterable sins of my parents; and though the shadows will come,
and do come, whenever I think upon the past, or see a face which, like
yours, recalls memories as bitter as ever overwhelmed an innocent girl
in her first youth, I find that with every year of love and peace