(879) Younger brother of the Duc de Coigni, the grand `ecuyer of Marie Antoinette and great uncle of the present Duc de Coigni.

(880) The Duc de Fleury, the Count de Coigni’s son-in-law.

(881) The wife of Admiral Nugent.

(882) he means Mr. Jerningham’s play, the Siege of Berwick.

Letter 411 To The Miss Berrys.  Friday, December 13, 1793. (page 553)

You will not wonder at my dulness about the time of your setting out, and of the giles you are to make on the road:  you are used to my fits of incomprehension; and, as is natural at my age, I believe they increase.  What augmented them was my eagerness to be sure of every opportunity of sending you the earliest intelligence of every event that may happen at this critical period.  That impatience has sometimes made me too precipitate in my information.  I believed Lord Howe’s success too rapidly:  you have seen by all the newspapers, that both the ministers and the public were equally credulous, from the collateral channels that imported such assertions!  Well! if you have been disappointed of capturing five or six French men-of-war, you must at present stay your appetite by some handsome slices of St. Domingo, and by plentiful goblets of French blood shed by the Duke of Brunswick; which we firmly believe, though the official intelligence was not arrived last night.  His Highness, who has been so serene for above a year, seems to have waked to some purpose and, which is not less propitious, his victory indicates that his principal, the King of Prussia, has added no more French jewels to his regalia.  I shall like to hear the National Convention accuse him of being bribed by a contrary Pitt’s diamond.(883) Here is another comfortable symptom:  it looks as if Robespierre would give up Barr`ere.  How fortunate that Beelzebubs and Molochs peach one another, like human highwaymen!  I will tell you a reflection I have made, and which shows how the worst monsters counteract their own councils.  Many formerly, who meant to undermine religion, began by sapping the belief of a devil.  Next, by denying God, they have restored Satan to his throne, or will; though the present system is a republic of fiends.  The Pandemonium below recalls its agents, as if they were only tribunes of the people elected by temporary factions.  Barnave, called the Butcher in the first Convention, is ,gone, like Orleans and Brissot.  If we do not presume to interpret judgments, I wonder the monsters themselves do not:  enough has happened already to warn them of their own fate!

The Conways are in town for two or three days:  they came for Mr. Jerningham’s play.  Harris had at last allowed him the fourth night; and he had a good night.  I have a card from Lady Amherst for Monday; and shall certainly go, as my lord behaved so nobly about our cousin.(884) I have another from the Margravine of Anspach, to sup at Hammersmith; whither I shall certainly not go, but plead the whole list of chronical distempers.  Do you think if the whole circle of Princes of Westphalia were to ask me for next Thursday evening,(885) that I would accept the invitation?