her maid, and hid herself in the cellar. Whether the story

be a calumny or not, it is at least characteristic.
After all, it was mainly due to her that Holland House became

the focus of all that was brilliant in Europe. In the
memoirs of her father - Sydney Smith - Mrs. Austin writes:

'The world has rarely seen, and will rarely, if ever, see
again all that was to be found within the walls of Holland

House. Genius and merit, in whatever rank of life, became a
passport there; and all that was choicest and rarest in

Europe seemed attracted to that spot as their natural soil.'
Did we learn much at Temple Grove? Let others answer for

themselves. Acquaintance with the classics was the staple of
a liberal education in those times. Temple Grove was the

ATRIUM to Eton, and gerund-grinding was its RAISON D'ETRE.
Before I was nine years old I daresay I could repeat -

parrot, that is - several hundreds of lines of the AEneid.
This, and some elementaryarithmetic, geography, and drawing,

which last I took to kindly, were dearly paid for by many
tears, and by temporarily impaired health. It was due to my

pallid cheeks that I was removed. It was due to the
following six months - summer months - of a happy life that

my health was completely restored.
CHAPTER III

MR. EDWARD ELLICE, who constantly figures in the memoirs of
the last century as 'Bear Ellice' (an outrageous misnomer, by

the way), and who later on married my mother, was the chief
controller of my youthfuldestiny. His first wife was a

sister of the Lord Grey of Reform Bill fame, in whose
Government he filled the office of War Minister. In many

respects Mr. Ellice was a notable man. He possessed shrewd
intelligence, much force of character, and an autocratic

spirit - to which he owed his sobriquet. His kindness of
heart, his powers of conversation, with striking personality

and ample wealth, combined to make him popular. His house in
Arlington Street, and his shooting lodge at Glen Quoich, were

famous for the number of eminent men who were his frequent
guests.

Mr. Ellice's position as a minister, and his habitual
residence in Paris, had brought him in touch with the leading

statesmen of France. He was intimately acquainted with Louis
Philippe, with Talleyrand, with Guizot, with Thiers, and most

of the French men and French women whose names were bruited
in the early part of the nineteenth century.

When I was taken from Temple Grove, I was placed, by the
advice and arrangement of Mr. Ellice, under the charge of a

French family, which had fallen into decay - through the
change of dynasty. The Marquis de Coubrier had been Master

of the Horse to Charles X. His widow - an old lady between
seventy and eighty - with three maiden daughters, all

advanced in years, lived upon the remnant of their estates in
a small village called Larue, close to Bourg-la-Reine, which,

it may be remembered, was occupied by the Prussians during
the siege of Paris. There was a chateau, the former seat of

the family; and, adjoining it, in the same grounds, a pretty
and commodious cottage. The first was let as a country house

to some wealthy Parisians; the cottage was occupied by the
Marquise and her three daughters.

The personal appearances of each of these four elderly
ladies, their distinct idiosyncrasies, and their former high

position as members of a now moribund nobility, left a
lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps,

from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of
stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of

the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with
large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, with a

broad frill which flopped over her tortoise-shell spectacles.
She wore a black bombazine gown, and list slippers. When in

the garden, where she was always busy in the summer-time, she
put on wooden sabots over her slippers.

Despite this homelyexterior, she herself was a 'lady' in
every sense of the word. Her manner was dignified and

courteous to everyone. To her daughters and to myself she
was gentle and affectionate" target="_blank" title="a.亲爱的">affectionate. Her voice was sympathetic,

almost musical. I never saw her temper ruffled. I never
heard her allude to her antecedents.

The daughters were as unlike their mother as they were to one
another. Adele, the eldest, was very stout, with a profusion

of grey ringlets. She spoke English fluently. I gathered,
from her mysterious nods and tosses of the head, (to be sure,

her head wagged a little of its own accord, the ringlets too,
like lambs' tails,) that she had had an AFFAIRE DE COEUR with

an Englishman, and that the perfidious islander had removed
from the Continent with her misplaced affections. She was a

trifle bitter, I thought - for I applied her insinuations to
myself - against Englishmen generally. But, though cynical

in theory, she was perfectlyamiable in practice. She
superintended the menage and spent the rest of her life in

making paper flowers. I should hardly have known they were
flowers, never having seen their prototypes in nature. She

assured me, however, that they were beautiful copies -
undoubtedly she believed them to be so.

Henriette, the youngest, had been the beauty of the family.
This I had to take her own word for, since here again there

was much room for imagination and faith. She was a confirmed
invalid, and, poor thing! showed every symptom of it. She

rarely left her room except for meals; and although it was
summer when I was there, she never moved without her

chauffrette. She seemed to live for the sake of patent
medicines and her chauffrette; she was always swallowing the

one, and feeding the other.
The middle daughter was Aglae. Mademoiselle Aglae took

charge - I may say, possession - of me. She was tall, gaunt,
and bony, with a sharp aquiline nose, pomegranate cheek-

bones, and large saffron teeth ever much in evidence. Her
speciality, as I soon discovered, was sentiment. Like her

sisters, she had had her 'affaires' in the plural. A Greek
prince, so far as I could make out, was the last of her

adorers. But I sometimes got into scrapes by mixing up the
Greek prince with a Polish count, and then confounding either

one or both with a Hungarian pianoforte player.
Without formulating my deductions, I came instinctively to

the conclusion that 'En fait d'amour,' as Figaro puts it,
'trop n'est pas meme assez.' From Miss Aglae's point of view

a lover was a lover. As to the superiority of one over
another, this was - nay, is - purely subjective. 'We receive

but what we give.' And, from what Mademoiselle then told me,
I cannot but infer that she had given without stint.

Be that as it may, nothing could be more kind than her care
of me. She tucked me up at night, and used to send for me in

the morning before she rose, to partake of her CAFE-AU-LAIT.
In return for her indulgences, I would 'make eyes' such as I

had seen Auguste, the young man-servant, cast at Rose the
cook. I would present her with little scraps which I copied

in roundhand from a volume of French poems. Once I drew, and
coloured with red ink, two hearts pierced with an arrow, a

copious pool of red ink beneath, emblematic of both the
quality and quantity of my passion. This work of art

produced so deep a sigh that I abstained thenceforth from
repeating such sanguinary endearments.

Not the least interesting part of the family was the
servants. I say 'family,' for a French family, unlike an

English one, includes its domestics; wherein our neighbours
have the advantage over us. In the British establishment the

household is but too often thought of and treated as
furniture. I was as fond of Rose the cook and maid-of-all-

work as I was of anyone in the house. She showed me how to
peel potatoes, break eggs, and make POT-AU-FEU. She made me

little delicacies in pastry - swans with split almonds for
wings, comic little pigs with cloves in their eyes - for all