Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 65

To MR. BANNATYNE.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Nov. 14, 1827.

I send the letter you wished for&mdash;not to Clery, who is dead, but to Louis Bousset, who was the Abbé Edgeworth's servant, and after his death was taken into Louis XVIII.'s household, accompanied the Royal family to Hartwell, returned with them to France, and now lives on a pension from the French Government and his wife's income; she was widow to the King's saddler. They showed much respect, my brother Sneyd says, to our pious cousin the Abbé Edgeworth's memory, and he was much edified by their manner of living together, Bousset and his wife&mdash;he a Catholic, and she a German Protestant, "perfect Christian happiness thoroughly existing between two persons of different Churches, but of the same faith."

Though I admire the instance and exception to general rules, I should not wish a similar experiment to be often repeated, being very much of Dr. Johnson's opinion, that there are so many causes naturally of disagreement between people yoked together, that there is no occasion to add another unnecessarily.