132 Reviru'S of Books (Sth to 17th inclusive). Yet that 1S02 is intended is shown by the dates on pp. 289-290, expressed in terms of the Gregorian calendar. The chronology of the editorial notes is as dubious as that of the letters and diary. On page 140 we find the date 25 Nivose, the editor explaining parenthetically that that was February 19, 1800, whereas our tables show that it was January 15. He is also plainly under the im- pression that Vendemiaire follows rather than precedes Brumaire in the French calendar (p. 139). These unusual memoirs close in a tumultuous tangle of dates which leaves the reader in the most hopeless consternation. Cecile in a letter to her friend, dated 7 Floreal XI. (April 27, 1803), refers to a coming family event (p. 289). This event occurred, as an editorial note informs us, July II, 1802, when a child was born to the von Alvenslebens (p. 289). On the same day Mademoiselle Cecile was married in Paris. After the wedding and after hearing of the arrival of the boy (as the C9n- tents of the letter show) she writes her German friend. The date given is 12 Messidor, the year lacking. 12 Messidor is July i. The year could not have been 1S02 for neither the marriage nor the birth of her friend's child had then taken place. Nor could it have been 1803, for we find Frauvon Alvensleben recording in her diary on June 10, 1802, the news of the death of her friend Cecile on 28 Floreal (May 18). In the presence of chronological wonders like these the attention is not arrested by minor marvels such as Cecile's assertion that as a child she used constantly to be given toys by Talleyrand " while he was still Bishop of Autun," he being an intimate family friend (p. 203). Talley- rand was made Bishop of Autun in 1789. In 1781 Cecile had been pre- sented at court and had made her debut in society (p. 44) and since 1 783 she had been lady-in waiting to Princess de Lamballe. Or again this other statement (p. 197) in a letter dated December 24, 1802, that she is unable just now to have the interview she desires with Talleyrand "as he has not yet returned from Luneville where he is drawing up the final conditions of the Peace." Now the treaty of Luneville was concluded February 9, 1801. Furthermore it was negotiated by Joseph Bonaparte and not by Talleyrand. It must also be admitted that it requires no little boldness to make Marie Antoinette write at length to Princess de Lamballe on August 10, 1792, of all days in her career, when, as maybe safely asserted in view of our minute knowledge of the events of that day, she could do no such thing. Furthermore the character of the letter itself confirms us in our lack of confidence in its authenticity (pp. 65-66). We must also protest against the ragged French the Queen is made responsible for in the several letters published here and ascribed to her (pp. 48, 52, 65-66, 68 and particularly 113 and 114-115). Here we have feminine nouns accompanied by both masculine and feminine verb- endings and we observe the Queen addressing her sister in the plural form at the opening of the sentence and in the singular at the close, the sen- tence being just eleven words in length (p. 113).
