Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/202

194 Since I came, I have read two charming stories recently written by her. Another longer one she has just sold to La Presse for fifteen thousand francs. She does not receive nearly as much for her writings as Balzac, Dumas, or Sue. She has a much greater influence than they, but a less circulation.

She stays at the chateau, because the poor people there were suffering so much, and she could help them. She has subscribed twenty thousand francs for their relief, in the scarcity of the winter. It is a great deal to earn by one’s pen: a novel of several volumes sold for only fifteen thousand francs, as I mentioned before. * * *

At last, however, she came; and I went to see her at her house, Place d’Orleans. I found it a handsome modern residence. She had not answered my letter, written about a week before, and I felt a little anxious lest she should not receive me; for she is too much the mark of impertinent curiosity, as well as too busy, to be easily accessible to strangers. I am by no means timid, but I have suffered, for the first time in France, some of the torments of mauvaise honte, enough to see what they must be to many.

It is the custom to go and call on those to whom you bring letters, and push yourself upon their notice; thus you must go quite ignorant whether they are disposed to be cordial. My name is always murdered by the foreign servants who announce me. I speak very bad French; only lately have I had sufficient command of it to infuse some of my natural spirit in my discourse. This has been a great trial to me, who am eloquent and free in my own tongue, to be forced to feel my thoughts struggling in vain for utterance.