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MEMOIRS

OF

MADAME DE GENLIS.

THE time I passed at the Palais Royal, was at once the most brilliant and the most unhappy part of my life; I was in the zenith of my talents, and at the age when a woman joins to the freshness and the graces of youth all the accomplishments which habits of intercourse with the world can bestow. I was admired, praised, flattered, and courted; I found means of passing a large part of my time at home; I had concerts every Saturday. Gluck came to these regularly, his conversation was as agreeable as his talents were admirable; I was delighted at being applauded by him, and his praises carried my passion for music to its height; all the most celebrated performers of the day came to my concerts with an eagerness which never abated; I set apart another day for conversation parties. Every Tuesday, a very pleasant circle of acquaintance met at my house in short, I was constantly occupied, either in reading, or in forming plans of works which I have since completed. I was generally beloved in the great world -so much for the brilliant side of my situation. But the malignity and the hypocrisy of several persons belonging to the Palais Royal-the constantly renewed vexations-the unlooked-for calumnies, and the pretended reconciliations of which I have been so frequently the dupe-the injustice and the slanders-all caused me the

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