be to remark the improvement of our Ernest! He is now sixteen and full
of activity and spirit. He is desirous to be a true Swiss and to enter
into foreign service, but we cannot part with him, at least until his
elder brother returns to us. My uncle is not pleased with the idea of
a military career in a distant country, but Ernest never had your
powers of application. He looks upon study as an odious fetter; his
time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the
lake. I fear that he will become an idler unless we yield the point
and permit him to enter on the profession which he has selected.
Little alteration, except the growth of our dear children, has taken
place since you left us. The blue lake and snow-clad mountains they
never change; and I think our placid home and our contented hearts are
regulated by the same immutable laws. My trifling occupations take up
my time and amuse me, and I am rewarded for any exertions by seeing
none but happy, kind faces around me. Since you left us, but one
change has taken place in our little household. Do you remember on
what occasion Justine Moritz entered our family? Probably you do not;
I will relate her history, therefore in a few words. Madame Moritz,
her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the
third. This girl had always been the favourite of her father, but
through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and
after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed
this, and when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother
to allow her to live at our house. The republican institutions of our
country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which
prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less
distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the
lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are
more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same
thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in
our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition which, in our
fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance and a
sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.
Justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; and I
recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humour, one
glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that
Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica she looked so
frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her,
45