THREE:With his other sister, the Comtesse de Tess, she was not at first so intimate. For Mme. de Tess, a brisk, clever, amusing, original person, was not only a friend of Voltaire, and a diligent frequenter of the salons of the philosophers, wits, and encyclop?dists, but, although not going to their extreme lengths, was rather imbued with their opinions.Thus she wandered from place to place during the rest of her nine years of exile, generally under an assumed name; going now and then to Berlin, after the Kings death, and to Hamburg, which was full of emigrs, but where she met M. de Talleyrand and others of her own friends. Shunned and denounced by many, welcomed by others, she made many friends of different grades, from the brother and sister-in-law of the King of Denmark to worthy Mme. Plock, where she lodged in Altona, and the good farmer in Holstein, in whose farmhouse she lived. The storms and troubles of her life did not subdue her spirits; she was always ready for a new friendship, enjoying society, but able to do without it; taking an interest in everything, walking about the country in all weathers, playing the harp, reading, teaching a little boy she had adopted and called Casimir, and writing books by which she easily supported herself and increased her literary reputation.
