COUNT RUMFORD. 151 



his habitation as no longer the abode of peace. He 

 breakfasts alone in his apartment, while to his infinite 

 chagrin most of the visitors are his wife's determined 

 adherents. He is sometimes present at her tea-parties, 

 but finds little to amuse him. " I have waited," he 

 says (which we may doubt), "with great, I may say 

 unexampled patience, for a return of reason and a 

 change of conduct, but I am firmly resolved not to be 

 driven from my ground, not even by disgust. A sepa- 

 ration," he adds, " is unavoidable, for it would be highly 

 improper for me to continue with a person who has 

 given me so many proofs of her implacable hatred and 

 malice." 



The lease of the villa at Autcuil was purchased by 

 Eumford in 1808. The separation between him and 

 his wife took place " amicably " on the 13th of June, 

 1809. Ever afterwards, however, anger rankled in his 

 heart. He never mentions his wife but in terms of re- 

 pugnance and condemnation. His release from her fills 

 him with unnatural jubilation. On the fourth anni- 

 versary of his wedding-day he writes to his daughter : 

 " I make choice of this day to write to you, in reality to 

 testify joy, but joy that I am away from her." On the 

 fifth anniversary he writes thus: "You will perceive 

 that this is the anniversary of my marriage. I am 

 happy to call it to mind that I may compare my present 

 situation with the three and a half horrible years I 

 was living with that tyrannical, avaricious, unfeeling 

 woman." The closing six months of his married life he 

 describes as a purgatory sufficiently painful to do away 

 with the sins of a thousand years. Rumford, in fact, 

 writes with the bitterness of a defeated man. His wife 

 retained her friends, while he, who a short time pre- 

 viously had been the observed of all observers, found 

 himself practically isolated. This was a new and bitter 



