We were going to have festivals and masquerades for the birth of the Duke of Burgundy, but I suppose both they and the observance of the King’s birthday will be laid aside or postponed, on the death of our son-in-law.  Madame de Mirepoix would not stay to preside at her own banquets, but is slipped away to retake possession of the tabouret.  When the King wished her husband joy, my Lady Pembroke(279) was standing near him; she was a favourite, but has disgraced herself by marrying a Captain Barnard.  Mirepoix said, as he had no children he was indifferent to the honour of a duchy for himself, but was glad it would restore Madame to the honour she had lost by marrying him!  “Oh!” replied the King, ,you are of so great a family, the rank was nothing; but I can’t bear when women of quality marry one don’t know whom!”

Did you ever receive the questions I asked you about Lady Mary Wortley’s being confined by a lover that she keeps somewhere in the Brescian?  I long to know the particulars.  I have lately been at Woburn, where the Duchess of Bedford borrowed for me from a niece of Lady Mary about fifty letters of the latter.  They are charming! have more spirit and vivacity than you can conceive, and as much of the spirit of debauchery in them as you will conceive in her writing.  They were written to her sister, the unfortunate Lady Mar, whom she treated so hardly while out of her senses, which she has not entirely recovered, though delivered and tended with the greatest tenderness and affection by her daughter, Lady Margaret Erskine:  they live in a house lent to them by the Duke of Bedford; the Duchess is Lady Mary’s niece.(280) Ten of the letters, indeed, are dismal lamentations and frights of a scene of villany of Lady Mary, who, having persuaded one Ruremonde, a Frenchman and her lover, to entrust her with a large sum of money to buy stock for him, frightened him out of England, by persuading him that Mr. Wortley had discovered the intrigue, and would murder him; and then would have sunk the trust.  That not succeeding, and he threatening to print her letters, she endeavoured to make Lord Mar or Lord Stair cut his throat.  Pope hints at these anecdotes of her history in that line,

“Who starves a sister or denies a debt."(281)

In one of her letters she says, “We all partake of father Adam’s folly and knavery, who first eat the apple like a sot, and then turned informer like a scoundrel.”  This is character, at least, if not very delicate; but in most of them, the wit and style are superior to any letters I ever read but Madame Sevign`e’s.  It is very remarkable, how much better women write than men.  I have now before me a volume of letters written by the widow(282) of the beheaded Lord Russel, which are full of the most moving and expressive eloquence ; I want to persuade the Duke of Bedford to let them be printed.(283)

17th.—­I have learned nothing but that the Prince of Orange died of an imposthume in his head.  Lord Holderness is gone to Holland to-day—­I believe rather to learn than to teach.  I have received yours of Oct. 8, and don’t credit a word of Birtle’s(284) information.  Adieu!