Life of Count Rumford. 611 



c Your father died young, and in a very sudden man- 

 ner.' * Died ! ' replied the daughter, ' I do not believe 

 him to be dead, any more than I am at this moment.' 

 Madame instantly dropped what was in her hand, and 

 retired, desiring the daughter to do the same." 



The reader will doubtless observe in this narrative, 

 the material of which was evidently wrought in the 

 broodings of a morbid imagination, a token of what 

 we call an eccentricity of character in the writer of it. 

 Sarah Thompson was at that time forty years of age. 

 The only near relative which she had living was Paul 

 Rolfe, her half-brother, then at his home in Concord, 

 New Hampshire. Between the two there was no strong 

 affection, nor was he worthy of much regard. The 

 strange experiences and vicissitudes of her wandering 

 life, alternating between the simple and uneventful inci- 

 dents of American country towns and the excitements 

 and enjoyments of three foreign capitals, had, of course, 

 their naturally bewildering effect upon a character which 

 of itself exhibited no substantial qualities of discretion, 

 vigor, or genius. Her splendid opportunities may be 

 regarded as at least fairly balancing the infelicities and 

 misfortunes which shadowed one half of her lifetime. 

 She felt that she had really been an orphan through 

 the whole of her life. Her father in his intercourse 

 with her was inconstant and unequal ; at times seem- 

 ingly proud of her, and at other times ashamed of her. 

 Some of his own tastes, habits, and ways of life were 

 reasonable causes of annoyance to her. It must be 

 claimed also as an evidence of some filial consideration 

 and even magnanimity in her, that, after feeling the 

 irritation naturally consequent upon her coming to the 

 knowledge of certain disagreeable facts, she reconciled 



