Salon of Mme de Genlis (1803) [ People ]
… To me there was nothing of that engaging, captivating manner which I had been taught to expect by many even of her enemies; she seemed to me to be alive only to literary quarrels and jealousies: the muscles of her face as she spoke, or … imagination, and ill-tempered, but not malevolent: one who has been so torn to pieces that she now turns upon her enemies, and longs to tear in her turn. He says she has certainly great powers of pleasing, though I neither saw nor felt … pupils, and hear what they think of her, we should be able to form a better judgment than from all that her books and enemies say for or against her. I say her books , not her friends and enemies, for I fear she has no friends to plead …
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