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26 which ensued between parent and child, Mr. Pitt and his suit were forgotten.

Prince George Augustus of Mecklenburg was even less fortunate, being refused by both Monsieur and Madame Necker, with a promptitude which he fully deserved. For he had nothing to recommend him but his conspicuous position, and had very impudently avowed that he sought Mademoiselle Necker's hand only for the sake of her enormous dower.

The ground being thus cleared for Madame de Bouffler's protégé, that energetic lady set to work to obtain from Gustavus a promise not to remove the Baron, now ambassador, from France for a specified long term of years.

This assurance that they would not be parted from their daughter having been given to the Neckers, and formally embodied in a clause of the marriage settlement, the document was signed by the King and Queen of France, and several other illustrious personages, and the wedding celebrated on the 14th January 1776.

The first few days after her marriage, Madame de Staël, according to the custom of the time, passed under her father's roof; and among her letters is a sweet and affectionate one, which she addressed to her mother on the last day of her sojourn with her parents.

"Perhaps I have not always acted rightly towards you, Mamma," she writes. "At this moment, as in that of death, all my deeds are present to my mind, and I fear that I may not leave in you the regret that I desire. But deign to believe that the phantoms of imagination have often fascinated my eyes, and often come between you and me so as to render me