Her education had been derived from such a variety of sources,
that it formed an extraordinary assemblage. Like me, she had lost
her mother at her birth, and had received instruction as it chanced to
present itself: she had learned something of her governess,
something of her father, a little of her masters, but copiously from
her lovers; particularly a M. de Tavel, who, possessing both taste and
information, endeavored to adorn with them the mind of her he loved.
These various instructions, not being properly arranged, tended to
impede each other, and she did not acquire that degree of
improvement her natural good sense was capable of receiving; she
knew something of philosophy and physic, but not enough to eradicate
the fondness she had imbibed from her father for empiricism and
alchemy; she made elixirs, tinctures, balsams, pretended to secrets,
and prepared magestry; while quacks and pretenders, profiting by her
weakness, destroyed her property among furnaces, and minerals,
diminishing those charms and accomplishments which might have been the
delight of the most elegant circles.
But though these interested wretches took advantage of her
ill-applied education to obscure her good sense, her excellent heart
retained its her amiable mildness, sensibility for the unfortunate,
inexhaustible bounty, and open, cheerful frankness, knew no variation;
even at the approach of old age, when attacked by various
calamities, rendered more cutting by indigence, the serenity of her
disposition preserved to the end of her life the pleasing gayety of
her happiest days.
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