and yet wait behind their master, as I saw the Duc of Praslin's do, with a red pocket-handkerchief about their necks. Versailles, like everything else, is a mixture of parade and poverty, and in every instance exhibits something most dissonant from our manners. In the colonnades, upon the staircases, nay in the antechambers of the royal family, there are people selling all sorts of wares. While we were waiting in the Dauphin's sumptuous bedchamber, till his dressing-room door should be opened, two fellows were sweeping it, and dancing about in sabots to rub the floor.

You perceive that I have been presented. The Queen took great notice of me; none of the rest said a syllable. You are let into the King's bedchamber just as he has put on his shirt; he dresses and talks good-humouredly to a few, glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, and a-hunting. The good old Queen, who is like Lady Primrose in the face, and Queen Caroline in the immensity of her cap, is at her dressing-table, attended by two or three old ladies, who are languishing to be in Abraham's bosom, as the only man's bosom to whom they can hope for admittance. Thence you go to the Dauphin, for all is done in an hour. He scarce stays a minute; indeed, poor creature, he is a ghost, and cannot possibly last three months. The Dauphiness is in her bedchamber, but dressed and standing; looks cross, is not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace and accents. The four Mesdames, who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber in a row, with black cloaks and knotting-bags, looking good-humoured, not knowing what to say, and wriggling as if they wanted to make water. This ceremony too is very short: then you are carried to the Dauphin's three boys, who you may be sure only bow and stare. The Duke of Berry1 looks weak and weak-eyed: the Count de Provence is a fine boy; the Count d'Artois3 well enough. The whole concludes with seeing the Dauphin's little girl dine, who is as round and as fat as a pudding.

In the Queen's antechamber we foreigners and the foreign

Afterwards the unfortunate Louis XVI.-E. 2 Afterwards Louis XVIII.-E.

3 Afterwards Charles X.-E.

ministers were shown the famous beast of the Gevaudan, just arrived, and covered with a cloth, which two chasseurs lifted up. It is an absolute wolf, but uncommonly large, and the expression of agony and fierceness remains strongly imprinted on its dead jaws.

I dined at the Duc of Praslin's with four-and-twenty ambassadors and envoys, who never go but on Tuesdays to court. He does the honours sadly, and I believe nothing else well, looking important and empty. The Duc de Choiseul's face, which is quite the reverse of gravity, does not promise much more. His wife is gentle, pretty, and very agreeable. The Duchess of Praslin, jolly, red-faced, looking very vulgar, and being very attentive and civil. I saw the Duc de Richelieu in waiting, who is pale, except his nose, which is red, much wrinkled, and exactly a remnant of that age which produced General Churchill, Wilkes the player, the Duke of Argyle, &c. Adieu!

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Paris, Oct. 6, 1765.

I AM glad to find you grow just, and that you do conceive at last, that I could do better than stay in England for politics. "Tenez, mon enfant," as the Duchesse de la Ferté said to Madame Staal;1 "comme il n'y a que moi au monde qui aie toujours raison," I will be very reasonable; and as you have made this concession to me, who knew I was in the right, I will not expect you to answer all my reasonable letters. If you send a bullying letter to the King of Spain, or to Chose, my neighbour here, I will consider them as written to myself, and subtract so much from your bill. Nay, I will accept a line from Lady Ailesbury now and then in part of payment. I shall continue to write as the wind sets in my pen; and do own my babble does not demand much reply.

3

1 See Mémoires de Madame de Staal (the first authoress of that name), published with the rest of her works, in three small volumes.-E.

* Mr. Conway was now secretary of state for the foreign department.-E. 3 Louis XV.-E.

For so reasonable a person as I am, I have changed my mind very often about this country. The first five days I was in violent spirits; then came a dismal cloud of whisk and literature, and I could not bear it. At present I begin, very Englishly indeed, to establish a right to my own way. I laugh, and talk nonsense, and make them hear me. There are two or three houses where I go quite at my ease, am never asked to touch a card, nor hold dissertations. Nay, I don't pay homage to their authors. Every woman has one or two planted in her house, and God knows how they water them. The old President Henault' is the pagod at Madame du Deffand's, an old blind debauchée of wit, where I supped last night. The President is very near deaf, and much nearer superannuated. He sits by the table: the mistress of the house, who formerly was his, inquires after every dish on the table, is told who has eaten of which, and then bawls the bill of fare of every individual into the President's ears. In short, every mouthful is proclaimed, and so is every blunder I make against grammar. Some that I make on purpose, succeed; and one of them is to be reported to the Queen to-day by Henault, who is her great favourite. I had been at Versailles; and having been much taken notice of by her Majesty, I said, alluding to Madame Sévigné, La Reine est le plus grand roi du monde. You may judge if I am in possession by a scene that passed after supper. Sir James Macdonald had been

'Le Président Henault, surintendant de la maison de Mademoiselle la Dauphine, membre de l'Académie Française et de l'Académie des Inscriptions, known by his celebrated work, the Abrégé Chronologique de l'Histoire de France, and from the excellent table which he kept, and which was the resort of all the wits and savans of the day. His cook was considered the best in Paris, and the master was worthy of his cook; a fact which Voltaire celebrates in the opening lines of the epitaph which he wrote for him

"Henault, fameux par vos soupers,

Et votre Chronologie," &c.-E.

2 Sir James Macdonald of Macdonald, the eighth baronet, who died at Rome on the 26th of July 1766, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, regretted by all who knew him. In the inscription on his monument, executed at Rome, and erected in the church of Slate, his character is thus drawn by his friend Lord Lyttelton :-" He had attained to so eminent a degree of knowledge in mathematics, philosophy, languages, and in every branch of useful and polite learning, as few have acquired in a

mimicking Hume: I told the women, who, besides the mistress, were the Duchess de la Valière,1 Madame de Forcalquier, a demoiselle, that to be sure they would be glad to have a specimen of Mr. Pitt's manner of speaking; and that nobody mimicked him so well as Elliot. They firmly believed it, teased him for an hour, and at last said he was the rudest man in the world not to oblige them. It appeared the more strange, because here everybody sings, reads their own works. in public, or attempts any one thing without hesitation or capacity. Elliot speaks miserable French; which added to the diversion.

I had had my share of distress in the morning, by going through the operation of being presented to the royal family, down to the little Madame's pap-dinner, and had behaved as sillily as you will easily believe; hiding myself behind every mortal. The Queen called me up to her dressing-table, and seemed mightily disposed to gossip with me; but instead of long life wholly devoted to study: yet to this erudition he joined, what can rarely be found with it, great talents for business, great propriety of behaviour, great politeness of manners: his eloquence was sweet, correct, and flowing; his memory vast and exact; his judgment strong and acute." On visiting Slate, in 1773, Dr. Johnson observed to Boswell, that this inscription “should have been in Latin, as everything intended to be universal and permanent should be." Upon this Mr. Croker remarks,—“ What a strange perversion of language!—universal! Why, if it had been in Latin, so far from being universally understood, it would have been an utter blank to one (the better) half of the creation, and even of the men who might visit it, ninety-nine will understand it in English for one who could in Latin. Something may be said for epitaphs and inscriptions addressed, as it were, to the world at largea triumphal arch - the pillar at Blenheim - the monument on the field of Waterloo; but a Latin epitaph, in an English church, appears, in principle, as absurd as the dinner, which the doctor gives in Peregrine Pickle, after the manner of the ancients. A mortal may surely be well satisfied if his fame lasts as long as the language in which he spoke or wrote."-E.

La Duchesse de la Valière, daughter of the Duc d'Usez. She was one of the handsomest women in France, and preserved her beauty even to old age. She died about the year 1792, at the age of eighty.-E.

2 The Comtesse de Forcalquier, née Canizy. She had been first married to the Comte d'Antin, son to the Comtesse de Toulouse, by a marriage previous to that with the Comte de Toulouse, one of the natural children of Louis Quatorze, whom he legitimated.-E.

Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto. He was appointed a lord of the admiralty in 1756, treasurer of the chamber in 1762, keeper of the signets for Scotland in 1767, and treasurer of the navy in 1770. He died in

1777.-E.

VOL. V.

G

enjoying my glory like Madame de Sévigné, I slunk back into the crowd after a few questions. She told Monsieur de Guerchy of it afterwards, and that I had run away from her, but said she would have her revenge at Fontainbleau. So I must go thither, which I did not intend. The King, Dauphin, Dauphiness, Mesdames, and the wild beast did not say a word to me. Yes, the wild beast, he of the Gevaudan. He is killed, and actually in the Queen's antechamber, where he was exhibited to us with as much parade as if it was Mr. Pitt. It is an exceedingly large wolf, and, the connoisseurs say, has twelve teeth more than any wolf ever had since the days of Romulus's wet-nurse. The critics deny it to be the true beast; and I find most people think the beast's name is legion, for there are many. He was covered with a sheet, which two chasseurs lifted up for the foreign ministers and strangers. I dined at the Duke of Praslin's with five-and-twenty tomes of the corps diplomatique; and after dinner was presented, by Monsieur de Guerchy, to the Duc de Choiseul. The Duc de Praslin is as like his own letters in D'Eon's book as he can stare; that is, I believe, a very silly fellow. His wisdom is of the grave kind. His cousin, the first minister, is a little volatile being, whose countenance and manner had nothing to frighten me for my country. I saw him but for three seconds, which is as much as he allows to any one body or thing. Monsieur de Guerchy, whose goodness to me is inexpressible, took the trouble of walking everywhere with me, and carried me particularly to see the new office for state papers. I wish I could send it you. It is a large building, disposed like an hospital, with the most admirable order and method. Lodgings for every officer; his name and business written over his door. In the body is a perspective of seven or eight large chambers: each is painted with emblems, and wainscoted with presses with wired doors and crimson curtains. Over each press, in golden letters, the country to which the pieces relate, as Angleterre, Allemagne, &c. Each room has a large funnel of bronze with or moulu, like a column, to air the papers and preserve them. In short, it is as magnificent as useful.