The house of TREUTTEL and WURTZ is one of the richest and one of the most respectable in Europe.  The commerce of that House is chiefly in the wholesale way; and they are, in particular, the publishers and proprietors of all the great classical works put forth at Strasbourg.  Indeed, it was at this latter place where the family first took root:  but the branches of their prosperity have spread to Paris and to London with nearly equal luxuriance.  They have a noble house in the Rue de Bourbon, no. 17:  like unto an hotel; where each day’s post brings them despatches from the chief towns in Europe.  Their business is regulated with care, civility, and dispatch; and their manners are at once courteous and frank.  Nothing would satisfy them but I must spend a Sabbath with them, at their country house at Groslai; hard by the village and vale of Montmorenci.  I assented willingly.  On the following Sunday, their capacious family coach, and pair of sleek, round, fat black horses, arrived at my lodgings by ten o’clock; and an hour and three quarters brought me to Groslai.  The cherries were ripe, and the trees were well laden with fruit:  for Montmorenci cherries, as you may have heard, are proverbial for their excellence.  I spent a very agreeable day with mine hosts.  Their house is large and pleasantly situated, and the view of Paris from thence is rather picturesque.  But I was most struck with the conversation and conduct of Madame Treuttel.  She is a thoroughly good woman.  She has raised, at her own expense, an alms-house in the village for twelve poor men; and built a national school for the instruction of the poor and ignorant of both sexes.  She is herself a Lutheran Protestant; as are her husband and her son-in-law M. Wuertz.  At first, she had some difficulties to encounter respecting the school; and sundry conferences with the village Cure, and some of the head clergy of Paris, were in consequence held.  At length all difficulties were surmounted by the promise given, on the part of Madame Treuttel, to introduce only the French version of the Bible by De Sacy.  Hence the school was built, and the children of the village flocked in numbers to it for instruction.  I visited both the alms-house and the school, and could not withhold my tribute of hearty commendation at the generosity, and thoroughly Christian spirit, of the foundress of such establishments.  There is more good sense and more private and public virtue, in the application of superfluous wealth in this manner, than in the erection of a hundred palaces like that at Versailles![126]