Salon of Mme de Genlis (1803) [ People ]
… signs of the place being inhabited except this lamp, which could not have been lighted without hands. I stood still in melancholy astonishment, while my father groped his way into a kind of porter's lodge, or den, at the foot of the stairs, … like the full-length picture of my great-great-grandmother Edgeworth you may have seen in the garret, very thin and melancholy, but her face not so handsome as my great-grandmother's; dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed thin lips, … to plead for her, except her books. I never met any one of any party who was her friend: this strikes me with real melancholy; to see a woman of the first talents in Europe, who lived and has shone in the gay court of the gayest nation …
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