there is no living there without them.  Lord Albermarle has, I hear, and am very glad of it, put you into the hands of Messieurs de Bissy.  Profit of that, and beg of them to let you attend them in all the companies of Versailles and Paris.  One of them, at least, will naturally carry you to Madame de la Valiores, unless he is discarded by this time, and Gelliot—­[A famous opera-singer at Paris.]—­retaken.  Tell them frankly, ’que vous cherchez a vous former, que vous etes en mains de maitres, s’ils veulent bien s’en donner la peine’.  Your profession has this agreeable peculiarity in it, which is, that it is connected with, and promoted by pleasures; and it is the only one in which a thorough knowledge of the world, polite manners, and an engaging address, are absolutely necessary.  If a lawyer knows his law, a parson his divinity, and a financier his calculations, each may make a figure and a fortune in his profession, without great knowledge of the world, and without the manners of gentlemen.  But your profession throws you into all the intrigues and cabals, as well as pleasures, of courts:  in those windings and labyrinths, a knowledge of the world, a discernment of characters, a suppleness and versatility of mind, and an elegance of manners, must be your clue; you must know how to soothe and lull the monsters that guard, and how to address and gain the fair that keep, the golden fleece.  These are the arts and the accomplishments absolutely necessary for a foreign minister; in which it must be owned, to our shame, that most other nations outdo the English; and, ‘caeteris paribus’, a French minister will get the better of an English one at any third court in Europe.  The French have something more ‘liant’, more insinuating and engaging in their manner, than we have.  An English minister shall have resided seven years at a court, without having made any one personal connection there, or without being intimate and domestic in any one house.  He is always the English minister, and never naturalized.  He receives his orders, demands an audience, writes an account of it to his Court, and his business is done.  A French minister, on the contrary, has not been six weeks at a court without having, by a thousand little attentions, insinuated himself into some degree of favor with the Prince, his wife, his mistress, his favorite, and his minister.  He has established himself upon a familiar and domestic footing in a dozen of the best houses of the place, where he has accustomed the people to be not only easy, but unguarded, before him; he makes himself at home there, and they think him so.  By these means he knows the interior of those courts, and can almost write prophecies to his own, from the knowledge he has of the characters, the humors, the abilities, or the weaknesses of the actors.  The Cardinal d’Ossat was looked upon at Rome as an Italian, and not as a French cardinal; and Monsieur d’Avaux, wherever he went, was never considered as a foreign minister, but as a native, and a personal friend.  Mere plain truth, sense, and knowledge, will by no means do alone in courts; art and ornaments must come to their assistance.  Humors must be flattered; the ‘mollia tempora’ must be studied and known:  confidence acquired by seeming frankness, and profited of by silent skill.  And, above all; you must gain and engage the heart, to betray the understanding to you.  ’Ha tibi erunt artes’.