re, which he positively refused.... This town is intolerably
expensive--as much so as Paris: there exists, too, an _esprit de
coterie_ appalling to _women_ strangers, for men are _les bien venus
partout_. They have a custom _parmi les gens du haut_ of receiving
strangers to board at a very high price _seulement pour leur agrement_,
in which houses there is no feast to be found unless it be of reason:
the hosts are too _spirituels_ to fancy that we possess a vulgar
appetite for meat, vegetables, tarts and custards; but as I cannot
subsist altogether on the contemplation of _la belle Nature_, I have
taken an apartment, hoping to get something to eat.... My health is
restored, and I am much less in the _genre larmoyant_ than when you saw
me.... I am happy not to have gone to Edinburgh: the climate here is
finer, living cheaper and the language French--more desirable for my
son. Why do you persist in living in Ireland?"

King Jerome afterward allowed his son one hundred dollars per month for
seven years, but with malignant cruelty ignored him in his will, which
wrong at once to her son and her own wifely fame Mme. Bonaparte
contested in Paris with a spirit that elicited the sympathy of Europe;
but Napoleon III., for reasons of policy, permitted her defeat, and also
at this time discontinued the annuity of fourteen thousand dollars
allowed to her son, Jerome Bonaparte, although recognizing him at court
as his cousin; but the six thousand dollars per annum granted to her
grandson, Captain Bonaparte, ceased only with the Empire.

"GENEVA, 1820. DEAR LADY MORGAN:... Baron Bonstetten came to see me
to-day. You were the subject of our conversation: nothing but
admiration. M. Sismondi has made my acquaintance--he is married too: I
wonder that people of genius marry. I have been in such a state of
melancholy as to wish myself dead a thousand times. What think you of a
person advising me to turn Methodist? Have you read Lamartine's
_Meditations poetiques_? There are some fine things in them, but he is
too _larmoyant_ and of the bad school of politics. Miss Edgeworth is
here: she came to see me, but we have not met. She has a great deal of
good sense, which I particularly object to in my companions unless
accompanied by genius.... They are so reasonable and unmoved in this
place, their mornings devoted to the exact sciences, their evenings to
whist! There have been some English, but I have seen little of them:
they are cold, formal,