I triumph much on my penetration about the honest Rucellai(766)-we little people, who have no honesty, virtue, nor shame, do so exult when a good neighbour, who was a pattern, turns out as bad as oneself!  We are like the good woman in the Gospel, who chuckled so much on finding her lost bit; we have more joy on a saint’s fall, than in ninety-nine devils, who were always de nous autres!  I am a little pleased too, that Marquis BagneSi’(767) whom you know I always liked much, has behaved so well; and am more pleased to hear what a Beffana(768) the Electress(769) is-Pho! here am I sending you back your own paragraphs, cut and turned! it is so silly to think that you won’t know them again!  I will not spin myself any longer; it is better to make a short letter.  I am going to the masquerade, and will fancy myself in via della Pergola.(770) Adieu!  “Do you know me?"-"That man there with you, in the black domino, is Mr. Chute.,, Good night!

(763) Frederick, Prince of Wales.-D.

(764) Prince and Princess Craon.

(765) Madame Sarasin.

(766) Sir H. Mann says, in his letter of January 7, 1743, 11 I must be so just as to tell you, @my friend, the Senator Rucellai, is, as you always thought, a sad fellow.  He has quite abandoned me for fear of offending."-D.

(767) “Apropos of duels, two of our young nobles, Marquis BagneSi and Strozzi, have fought about a debt of’ fifteen shillings; the latter, the creditor and the occasion of the fight, behaved ill."-Letter from Sir H. Mann, dated Jan. 7, 1743.-D.

(768) A Beffana was a puppet, which was carried about the town on the evening of the Epiphany.  The word is derived from Epifania.  It also means an ugly woman.  The Electress happened to go out for the first time after an illness on the Epiphany, and said in joke to Prince Craon, that the “Beffane all went abroad on that day."-D.

(769) The Electress Palatine Dowager, the last of the House of Medici.

(770) A street at Florence, in which the Opera house stands.

308 Letter 96 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Feb. 2, 1743.

Last night at the Duchess of Richmond’s I saw Madame Goldsworthy:  what a pert, little, unbred thing it is!  The duchess presented us to one another; but I cannot say that either of us stepped a foot beyond the first civilities.  The good duchess was for harbouring her and all her brood:  how it happened to her I don’t conceive, but the thing had decency enough to refuse it.  She is going to live with her father at Plymouth-tant mieux!