Modeste greatly admired the behavior of the young Englishwoman who offered herself to Crebillon, the son, who married her.

The story of Sterne and Eliza Draper was her life and her happiness for several months.

She made herself ideally the heroine of a like romance, and many a time she rehearsed in imagination the sublime role of Eliza.

The sensibility so charmingly expressed in that delightful correspondence filled her eyes with tears which, it is said, were lacking in those of the wittiest of English writers.
Modeste existed for some time on a comprehension, not only of the works, but of the characters of her favorite authors,--Goldsmith, the author of Obermann, Charles Nodier, Maturin.

The poorest and the most suffering among them were her deities; she guessed their trials, initiated herself into a destitution where the thoughts of genius brooded, and poured upon it the treasures of her heart; she fancied herself the giver of material comfort to these great men, martyrs to their own faculty.