This Princess was so exceedingly diffident that a person might be with her daily for years together without hearing her utter a single word.

It was asserted, however, that she displayed talent, and even amiability, in the society of some favourite ladies.

She taught herself a great deal, but she studied alone; the presence of a reader would have disconcerted her very much.

There were, however, occasions on which the Princess, generally so intractable, became all at once affable and condescending, and manifested the most communicative good-nature; this would happen during a storm; so great was her alarm on such an occasion that she then approached the most humble, and would ask them a thousand obliging questions; a flash of lightning made her squeeze their hands; a peal of thunder would drive her to embrace them, but with the return of the calm, the Princess resumed her stiffness, her reserve, and her repellent air, and passed all by without taking the slightest notice of any one, until a fresh storm restored to her at once her dread and her affability.

[Which reminds one of the elder (and puritanic) Cato who said that he "embraced" his wife only when it thundered, but added that he did enjoy a good thunderstorm.