What an offense have I committed! A woman!
I shall soon make it up. I think women better than men, in general, and
I know that you can keep a secret as well as any man whatever. But the
world don't know this. Therefore if I were to write my sentiments to
you, and the letter should be caught and hitched into a newspaper, the
world would say I was not to be trusted with a secret.
I never had so much trouble in my life as here, and yet I grow fat. The
climate and soil agree with me. So do the cookery and even the manners
of the people, of those of them at least that I converse with, churlish
republican as some of you on your side the water call me. The English
have got at me in their newspapers. They make fine work of me--fanatic,
bigot, perfect cipher, not one word of the language, awkward figure,
uncouth dress, no address, no character, cunning, hard-hearted attorney.
But the falsest of it all is, that I am disgusted with the Parisians;
whereas I admire the Parisians prodigiously. They are the happiest
people in the world, I believe, and have the best disposition to make
others so. If I had your ladyship and our little folks here, and no
politics to plague me, and a hundred thousand livres a year rent, I
should be the happiest being on earth. Nay, I believe I could make it do
with twenty thousand.
One word of politics. The English reproach the French with gasconade,
but I don't believe their whole history could produce so much of it as
the English have practiced this war. The commissioners' proclamation,
with its sanction from the ministry and ratification by both houses, I
suppose is hereafter to be interpreted like Burgoyne's "Speaking daggers
but using none." They cannot send any considerable reinforcement, nor
get an ally in Europe. This I think you may depend upon. Their artifice
in throwing out such extravagant threats was so gross that I presume it
has not imposed on any. Yet a nation that regarded its character never
could have threatened in that manner.
Adieu.