Now that I have told you all that I know or have heard, of public matters, let us talk of private ones that more nearly and immediately concern us.  Admit me to your fire-side, in your little room; and as you would converse with me there, write to me for the future from thence.  Are you completely ‘nippe’ yet?  Have you formed what the world calls connections? that is, a certain number of acquaintances whom, from accident or choice, you frequent more than others:  Have you either fine or well-bred women there?  ‘Y a-t-il quelque bon ton’?  All fat and fair, I presume; too proud and too cold to make advances, but, at the same time, too well-bred and too warm to reject them, when made by ’un honnete homme avec des manieres’.

Mr.------is to be married, in about a month, to Miss------.  I am very
glad of it; for, as he will never be a man of the world, but will always
lead a domestic and retired life, she seems to have been made on purpose
for him.  Her natural turn is as grave and domestic as his; and she seems
to have been kept by her aunts ‘a la grace’, instead of being raised in a
hot bed, as most young ladies are of late.  If, three weeks hence, you
write him a short compliment of congratulation upon the occasion, he, his
mother, and ‘tutti quanti’, would be extremely pleased with it.  Those
attentions are always kindly taken, and cost one nothing but pen, ink,
and paper.  I consider them as draughts upon good-breeding, where the
exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer.  ‘A propos’ of
exchange; I hope you have, with the help of your secretary, made yourself
correctly master of all that sort of knowledge—­Course of Exchange,
‘Agie, Banco, Reiche-Thalers’, down to ‘Marien Groschen’.  It is very
little trouble to learn it; it is often of great use to know it. 
Good-night, and God bless you!

LETTER CCIX

Blackheath, October 10, 1757

My dear friend:  It is not without some difficulty that I snatch this moment of leisure from my extreme idleness, to inform you of the present lamentable and astonishing state of affairs here, which you would know but imperfectly from the public papers, and but partially from your private correspondents.  ‘Or sus’ then—­Our in vincible Armada, which cost at least half a million, sailed, as you know, some weeks ago; the object kept an inviolable secret:  conjectures various, and expectations great.  Brest was perhaps to be taken; but Martinico and St. Domingo, at least.  When lo! the important island of Aix was taken without the least resistance, seven hundred men made prisoners, and some pieces of cannon carried off.  From thence we sailed toward Rochfort, which it seems was our main object; and consequently one should have supposed that we had pilots on board who knew all the soundings and landing places there and thereabouts:  but no; for General M-----t asked the Admiral if he could land him and