You will give me leave according to an article of our treaty, to
write you only three lines, just to tell that I am well and where I
am.
Upon my arrival at Besançon I saw Mr. Acton[50] directly. He has
received me with a degree not only of civility but of friendship
which astonished me, insisted upon my taking an appartment in his
house, and since my seeing him, himself and his three sons (our
Southampton friend is one) have been only taken up in procuring me
every kind of amusement, in carrying me to all my father's friends
here who have all enquired much after him, in seeing publick places,
and in parties at home and abroad. The only inconvenience is that
I have not an instant to myself and that I am forced to write this
scrawl at half an hour after one in the morning. The day after
to-morrow I set out for Lausanne, where I shall be a little quieter.
The Acton family desire to be remembered to my father.
I am, Dear Madam,
Yours and my father's with the truest affection,
E. G., JUNIOR.
[50] Dr. Acton was a cousin of Gibbon. He married, "renounced his
country, and settled at Besançon, and became the father of three
sons, the eldest of whom, General (afterwards Sir John Francis
Edward) Acton, is conspicuous in Europe as the principal minister
of the King of the Two Sicilies." He was the grandfather of the
present Lord Acton.
[Sidenote: BESANÇON.]
25.
_To his Father._
Lausanne, May the 31st, 1763.