The duke of Richmond is still at Aubigné: I wonder he stays, for it is the hardest frost alive. Mr. Hume does not go to Ireland, where your brother finds he would by no means be welcome. I have a notion he will stay here till your brother's return. The duc de Praslin, it is said, will retire at Christmas. As La Borde, the great banker of the court, is trying to retire, too, my cousin, who is much connected with La Borde, suspects that Choiseul is not very firm himself. I have supped with monsieur de Maurepas, and another night with marshal Richelieu: the first is extremely agreeable and sensible; and, I am glad, not Minister. The other is an old piece of tawdry, worn out, but endeavouring to brush itself up; and put me in mind of lord Chesterfield, for they laugh before they know what he has said-and are in the right, for I think they would not laugh afterwards. I send lady Ailesbury the words and music of the prettiest opera comique in the world-I wish I could send her the actors too. Adieu ! Yours ever. December 9. LORD OSSORY put off his journey; which stopped this letter, and it will now go by Mr. Andr. Stuart. The face of things is changed here, which I am impatient to tell you, that you may see it is truth, not system, which I pique myself on sending you. The vigour of the court has frightened the parliaments. That of Pau has submitted. The procureurs, &c. of Rennes, who, it was said, would not plead before the new commission, were told, that if they did not plead the next day they should be hanged without a trial. No bribe ever operated faster! I heard t'other day, that some Spanish minister, I forget his name, being dead, Squillace would take his department, and Grimaldi have that of the West Indies.-He is the worst that could have it, as we have no greater enemy. The dauphin is certainly alive, but in the most shocking way possible; his bones worn through his skin, a great sw behind, and so relaxed, that his intestines appear part; and yesterday the mortification was suspected. I have received a long letter from lady Ailesbury, for which I give her a thousand thanks; and would answer it directly, if I had not told you every thing I know. The duke and duchess' are, I hear, at Fontainbleau: the moment they return, I will give the duchess lady Ailesbury's commission. TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY. Paris, January 2, 1766. WHEN I came to Paris, madam, I did not know that by New-Year's Day I should find myself in Siberia; at least as cold. There have not been two good days together since the middle of October.- However, I do not complain, as I am both well and well pleased, though I wish for a little of your sultry English weather, all French as I am. I have entirely left off dinners, and lead the life I always liked, of lying late in bed, and sitting up late. I am told of nothing but how contradictory this is to your ladyship's orders; but as I shall have dull dinners and triste evenings enough when I return to England, all your kindness cannot persuade me to sacrifice my pleasures here, too. Many of my opinions are fantastic; perhaps this is one, that nothing produces gout like doing any thing one dislikes. I believe the gout, like a near relation, always visits one when one has some other plague. Your ladyship's dependence on the waters of Sunning-hill is, I hope, better founded; but in the mean time my system is full as pleasant. Madame d'Aiguillon's goodness to me does not abate, nor madame Geoffrin's. I have seen but little of madame d'Egmont,' who seems very good, and is universally in esteem. She is now in great affliction, having lost suddenly monsieur Pignatelli, the minister at Parma, whom she bred up, and whom she and her family had generously destined for her grand-daughter, an immense heiress. It was very delicate and touching what madame d'Egmont said to her daughter-in-law on this occasion:-"Vous voyez, ma chère, combien j'aime mes enfans d'adop1 Of Richmond. [Or] La comtesse d'Egmont, daughter to the maréchal due de Richelieu. [Ed.] tion!" This daughter-in-law is delightfully pretty, and civil, and gay, and conversible, though not a regular beauty like madame de Monaco. The bitterness of the frost deters me, madam, from all sights; I console myself with good company, and still more, with being absent from bad. Negative as this satisfaction is, it is incredibly great, to live in a town like this, and to be sure every day of not meeting one face one hates! I scarce know a positive pleasure equal to it. Your ladyship and lord Holland shall laugh at me as much as you please for my dread of being thought charming; yet I shall not deny my panic, as surely nothing is so formidable aş to have one's limbs on crutches and one's understanding in leading-strings. The prince of Conti laughed at me t'other day on the same account. I was complaining to the old blind charming madame du Deffand, that she preferred Mr. Crawford to me: "What," said the prince," does not she love you?" "No, sir," I replied, "she likes me no better than if she had seen me." Mr. Hume carries this letter and Rousseau to England. I wish the former may not repent having engaged with the latter, who contradicts and quarrels with all mankind, in order to obtain their admiration. I think both his means and his end below such a genius. If I had talents like his, I should despise any suffrage below my own standard, and should blush to owe any part of my fame to singularities and affectations. But great parts seem like high towers erected on high mountains, the more exposed to every wind, and readier to tumble. Charles Townshend is blown round the compass; Rousseau insists that the north and south blow at the same time; and Voltaire demolishes the Bible to erect fatalism in its stead:-So compatible are the greatest abilities and greatest absurdities! Madame d'Aiguillon gave me the enclosed letter for your ladyship. I wish I had any thing else to send you; but there are no new books, and the theatres are shut up for the dauphin's death, who, I believe, is the greatest loss they have had since Harry IV. To JOHN CHUTE, Esq. Paris, Jan. 1766. It is in vain, I know, my dear sir, to scold you, though I have such a mind to it-nay, I must. Yes, you that will not lie a night at Strawberry in autumn for fear of the gout, to stay in the country till this time, and till you caught it! I know you will tell me, it did not come till you had been two days in town. Do, and I shall have no more pity for you than if I was your wife, and had wanted to come to town two months ago. I am perfectly well, though to be sure Lapland is the torrid zone in comparison of Paris. We have had such a frost for this fortnight, that I went nine miles to dine in the country to-day, in a villa exactly like a green-house, except that there was no fire but in one room. We were four in a coach, and all our chinks stopped with furs, and yet all the glasses were frozen. We dined in a paved hall painted in fresco, with a fountain at one end; for in this country they live in perpetual opera, and persist in being young when they are old, and hot when they are frozen. At the end of the hall sat shivering three glorious maccaws, a vast cockatoo, and two poor parroquets, who squalled like the children in the wood after their nursery-fire! I am come home, and blowing my billets between every paragraph, yet can scarce move my fingers. However, I must be dressed presently, and go the comtesse de la Marche,' who has appointed nine at night for my audience. It seems a little odd to us to be presented to a princess of the blood at that hourbut I told you, there is not a tittle in which our manners resemble one another. I was presented to her father-in-law the prince of Conti last Friday. In the middle of the levée entered a young woman, too plain I thought to be any thing but his near relation. I was confirmed in my opinion, by seeing her, after he had talked to her, go round the circle and do the honours of it. I asked a gentleman near me if that was the comtesse de la La comtesse de la Marche, a princess of Modena, married to the only son of the prince de Conti. Le comte de la Marche was the only one of the French princes of the blood who uniformly sided with the court in the disputes with the Parliament of Paris. [Ed.] Marche? He burst into a violent laughter, and then told me, it was mademoiselle Auguste, a dancer!-Now, who was in the wrong? I give you these as samples of many scenes that have amused me, and which will be charming food at Strawberry. At the same time that I see all their ridicules, there is a douceur in the society of the women of fashion that captivates me. I like the way of life, though not lively; though the men are posts and apt to be arrogant, and though there are twenty ingredients wanting to make the style perfect. I have totally washed my hands of their savants and philosophers, and do not even envy you Rousseau, who has all the charlatanerie of count St. Germain' to make himself singular and talked of. I suppose Mrs. ****, my lord * * * *, and a certain lady friend of mine, will be in raptures with him, especially as conducted by Mr. Hume. But, however I admire his parts, neither he nor any Genius I have known has had common sense enough to balance the impertinence of their pretensions. They hate priests, but love dearly to have an altar at their feet; for which reason it is much pleasanter to read them than to know them. Adieu, my dear sir! Yours ever. January 15. THIS has been writ this week, and waiting for a conveyance, and as yet has got none. Favre tells me you are recovered, but you don't tell me so yourself. I enclose a trifle that I wrote lately, which got about and has made enormous noise in a city where they run and cackle after an event, like a parcel of hens after an accidental husk of a grape. It has made me the 3 2 The comte de St. Germain was a native of Alsace, who had acquired a considerable military reputation in France by his conduct at Corbach in 1760, when he commanded the reserve, and saved the army by supporting the rearguard and allowing the whole body to retire upon Cassel. Considering himself ill-used by the marshal de Broglio, his commander-in-chief, he obtained leave to retire from the French service and entered that of Denmark, from which he retired into private life in 1774. From this retirement he was summoved by Louis XVI., upon the death of the comte de Muy, minister-atwar, as his successor, and the improvements which he made in the service proved him to have been well qualified for that post. [Ed.] 3 The letter from the king of Prussia to Rousseau. [Or.] |