secretary of state; a courtier-wretch, whose mistress used to sell lettres do cachet for a louis.(654) Calonne was left to wait in the antechamber; but being, as he said, suddenly called in to the minister, as he was reading (a most natural soil for such a lecture) the letter of his friend, he by a second natural inadvertence left the fatal letter on the chimney-piece.  The consequence, much more natural, was, that La Chalotais was committed to the Ch`ateau du Taureau, a horrible dungeon on a rock in the sea, with his son, whose legs mortified there, and the father was doomed to the scaffold; but the Duc de Choiseul sent a counter reprieve by an express and a cross-road, and saved him.(655) At the beginning of this reign he was restored.  Paris, however, was so indignant at the treachery, that this Calonne was hissed out of the theatre, when I was in that capital.(656) When I heard, some years after, that a Calonne was made controlleur-g`en`eral, I concluded that it must be a son, not conceiving that so reprobated a character could emerge to such a height; but asking my sister, ’who has been in France since I was, she assured me it was not only the identical being, but that when she was at Metz, where I think he was intendant, the officers in garrison would not dine with him.  When he fled hither for an asylum, I did not talk of his story till I saw it in one of the pamphlets that were written against him in France, and that came over hither.

Friday night, 31st.

My company prevented my finishing this:  part left me at noon, the residue are to come to-morrow.  To-day I have dined at Fulham(657) along with Mrs. Boscawen but St. Swithin played the devil so, that we could not stir out of doors, and had fires to chase the watery Spirits.  Quin, being once asked if ever he had seen so bad a winter, replied, “Yes, just such an one last summer!”—­and here is its youngest brother!

Mrs. Boscawen saw a letter from Paris to Miss Sayer this morning, Which says Necker’s son-in-law was arrived, and had announced his father-in- law’s promise of return from Basle.  I do not know whether his honour or ambition prompt this compliance; Surely not his discretion.  I am much acquainted with him, and do not hold him great and profound enough to quell the present anarchy. if he attempts to moderate for the King, I Shall not be surprised if he falls another victim to tumultuary jealousy and outrage.(658) All accounts agree in the violence of the mob against the inoffensive as well as against the objects of their resentment; and in the provinces, where even women are not safe in their houses.  The hotel of the Duc de Chatelet, lately built and superb, has been assaulted, and the furniture sold by auction;(659) but a most shocking act of a royalist in Burgundy who is said to have blown up a committee of forty persons, will probably spread the flames of civil rage much wider.  When I read the account I did not believe it; but the Bishop of London says, he hears the `Etats have required the King to write to every foreign power not to harbour the execrable author, who is fled.(660) i fear this conflagration will not end as rapidly as that in Holland!