She is vivacious, and active to excess, and can only
keep still when asleep, or when playing her favorite game of piquet. She
has her four meals a day, eats like a vintager, and takes her wine neat.
She professes an undisguised contempt for the silly women of our century
who live for a week on a partridge, and inundate with water grand
sentiments which they entangle in long phrases. She has always been, and
still is, very positive, and her word is prompt and easily understood.
She never shrinks from using the most appropriate word to express her
meaning. So much the worse, if some delicate ears object! She heartily
detests hypocrisy.
She believes in God, but she believes also in M. de Voltaire, so that
her devotion is, to say the least, problematical. However, she is on
good terms with the curate of her parish, and is very particular about
the arrangement of her dinner on the days she honours him with an
invitation to her table. She seems to consider him a subaltern, very
useful to her salvation, and capable of opening the gate of paradise for
her.
Such as she is, she is shunned like the plague. Everybody dreads her
loud voice, her terrible indiscretion, and the frankness of speech which
she affects, in order to have the right of saying the most unpleasant
things which pass through her head.
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