Life of Count Rumford. 313 



be amiss. I think I must have implied more tnan once that I 

 had a great love and veneration for my mother. It was very 

 natural. She had taken care of me in my infancy and child- 

 hood, and brought me up. I recollected often hearing her dis- 

 approve the habit many have on the slightest indisposition of 

 seeking medical assistance. Yet, poor woman ! I best recollect 

 her as on her sick-bed, with the doctor by her side, for she 

 never had even tolerable health. Children hear and reflect 

 more than is always imagined. I remembered her telling a little 

 story of my father, that, if anything ailed even a ringer, the 

 whole house must be put in an uproar about it. So that, in the 

 present instance, if I say the physician arriving left me an 

 emetic, which I put aside and would not take, I only followed 

 the precepts of my mother instead of those of my father. I was 

 perfectly freed of the disorder in a short time without the least 

 medicine. 



" In one of our horseback excursions we had the usual party, 

 except that the Countess was kept back by a previous engage- 

 ment. It proved fortunate, for our horses were restive and 

 troublesome, so much so that, when we arrived at the Garden, 

 as usual, our destination, my father told one of his aids 

 Spreti to go with him, and the other to stay with me ; and 

 the same to the grooms. He wished to let Fawn have his run 

 out. We were jogging along when Tancred started and like 

 to have thrown me. Count Taxis, frightened, said to me in 

 English (which I did not suppose he knew much of, we never 

 speaking the language, and which, therefore, surprised me) 

 1 Take care, my dear ! ' From my looking down and making 

 no reply, he thought I was offended. He drew his horse near to 

 mine, and, looking me archly in the face, asked me if I did not 

 think that in learning English he learned pretty things. I told 

 him it depended on the sincerity of them. I spoke without 

 reflection, but think he construed them into more seriousness 

 than I really meant, by his dwelling some time on assurances 

 of the sincerity of his words and thoughts towards me. 



" By an unforeseen accident, if these assertions were true, he 

 was called upon to feel and express more forcibly than by simple 



