610 Life of Count Rumford. 



interfere and remonstrate so as to assert her own dig- 

 nity. She describes two stratagems, in which she had 

 an accomplice in one of the servants, amounting to 

 practical jokes played upon her father, to let him know 

 that her eyes were opened. The Countess says she was 

 decoyed into Switzerland to get her out of the way, 

 her father promising to join her. Then she was sent 

 on a visit to some friends in Havre, where she was 

 informed by the contents of a letter both of her father's 

 sickness and his death. The woman who occupied the 

 porter's lodge of the mansion at Auteuil, she says, 

 freely expressed to her, on her arrival, a belief that the 

 Count was not really dead. She adds that no human 

 being was invited to the funeral, though Count Le- 

 conteux lived within a stone's-throw. She also reports 

 as coming from one of her father's most intimate 

 friends, the Marquis Chansener (?), almost a daily vis- 

 itor at Auteuil, the following narrative : 



" I went out one day to see the Count. I was not myself 

 very well, but found him never in better health, running about, 

 giving orders to workmen, apparently in a great hurry, as if to 

 finish something. Being on the most intimate terms with him, 

 I asked him if he expected an addition to his family. The 

 Count said, l No, I only expect to go away myself.' Two or 

 three days after I received a note from Baron Delessert, the 

 only confidential friend of the Count, saying that he was indis- 

 posed. I got into my carriage to go and pay another visit, 

 when lo ! I met the funeral coming into town." 



Madame de Rumford also, it would seem, was absent 

 at the time, but was at once notified, and appeared soon 

 after the funeral. She soon invited the Countess to 

 dine with her. " When the dessert was on the table, and 

 the servants had been sent away, Madame remarked, 



