At Coubertin, surrounded by her nieces, she was fond of directing their studies.

This occupation caused her ideas to revert to the subject of education, and awakened once more the inclinations of her youth.

At the age of twelve years she could never meet a school of young ladies passing through the streets without feeling ambitious of the situation and authority of their mistress.

Her abode at Court had diverted but not altered her inclinations.

"A month after the fall of Robespierre," she says, "I considered as to the means of providing for myself, for a mother seventy years of age, my sick husband, my child nine years old, and part of my ruined family.