There are two points, Madam, on which I must write to your ladyship, though I have been confined these three or four Days with an inflammation in my eyes.  My watchings and revellings had, I doubt, heated my blood, and prepared it to receive a stroke of cold, which in truth was amply administered.  We were two-and-twenty at Mar`echale du Luxembourg’s, and supped in a temple rather than in a hall.  It is vaulted at top with gods and goddesses, and paved with marble; but the god of fire was not of the number.  HOWever, as this is neither of my points, I shall say no more of it.

I send your ladyship Lady Albemarle’s box, which Madame Geoffrin brought to me herself yesterday.  I think it very neat and charming, and it exceeds the commission but by a guinea and a half.  It is lined with wood between the two golds, as the price and necessary size would not admit metal enough without, to leave it of any solidity.

The other point I am indeed ashamed to mention so late.  I am more guilty than even about the scissors.  Lord Hertford sent me word a fortnight ago, that an ensigncy was vacant, to which he should recommend Mr. Fitzgerald.  I forgot both to thank him and to acquaint your ladyship, who probably know it without my communication.  I have certainly lost my memory!  This is so idle and young, that I begin to fear I have acquired something of the Fashionable man, which I so much dreaded.  It is to England then that I must return to recover friendship and attention?  I literally wrote to Lord Hertford, and forgot to thank him.  Sure I did not use to be so abominable!  I cannot account for it; I am as black as ink, and must turn Methodist, to fancy that repentance can wash me white again.  No, I will not; for then I may sin again, and trust to the same nostrum.

I had the honour of sending your ladyship the funeral sermon on the Dauphin, and a tract to laugh at sermons:  “Your bane and antidote are both before you.”  The first is by the Archbishop of Toulouse,(946) who is thought the first man of the clergy.  It has some sense, no pathetic, no eloquence, and, I think, clearly no belief in his own doctrine.  The latter is by the Abb`e Coyer,(947) written livelily, upon a single idea; and, though I agree upon the inutility of the remedy he rejects, I have no better opinion of that he would substitute.  Preaching has not failed from the beginning of the world till to-day, not because inadequate to the disease, but because the disease is incurable.  If one preached to lions and tigers, would it cure them of thirsting for blood, and sucking it when they have an opportunity No; but when they are whelped in the Tower, and both caressed and beaten, do they turn out a jot more tame when they are grown up?  So far from it, all the kindness in the world, all the attention, cannot make even a monkey (that is no beast of prey) remember a pair of scissors or an ensigncy.

Adieu, Madam! and pray don’t forgive me, till I have forgiven myself.  I dare not close my letter with any professions; for could you believe them in one that had so much reason to think himself Your most obedient humble servant?