I now jump to another topic; I find all this letter will be detached scraps; I can’t at all contrive to hide the scams:  but I don’t care.  I began my letter merely to tell you of the earthquake, and I don’t pique myself upon doing any more than telling you what you would be glad to have told you.  I told you too how pleased I was with the triumphs of another old beauty, our friend the Princess.(116) Do you know, I have found a history that has a great resemblance to hers; that is, that will be very like hers, if hers is but like it.  I will tell it you in as few words as I can.  Madame la Marechale de l’H`opital was the daughter of a sempstress;(117) a young gentleman fell in love with her, and was going to be married to her, but the match was broken off.  An old fermier-general, who had retired into the province where this happened, hearing the story, had a curiosity to see the victim; he liked her, married her, died, and left her enough not to care for her inconstant. he came to Paris, where the Marechal de l’H`opital married her for her riches.  After the Marechal’s death, Casimir, the abdicated King of Poland, who was retired into France, fell in love with the Marechale, and privately married her.  If the event ever happens, I shall certainly travel to Nancy, to hear her talk of ma belle-fille la Reine de France.  What pains my lady Pomfret would take to prove(118) that an abdicated King’s wife did not take place of an English countess; and how the Princess herself would grow still fonder of the Pretender(119) for the similitude of his fortune with that of le Roi mon mari!  Her daughter, Mirepoix, was frightened the other night, with Mrs. Nugent’s calling out, un voleur! un voleur!  The ambassadress had heard so much of robbing, that she did not doubt but dans ce pais cy, they robbed in the middle of an assembly.  It turned out to be a thief in the candle!  Good night!

(115) Dryden’s All for Love.”

(116) The Princess Craon, who, it had been reported, was to marry Stanislaus Leczinsky, Duke of Loraine and ex-King of Poland, whose daughter Maria Leczinska was married to Louis the Fifteenth, King of France.-D.

(117) “This is the story of a woman named Mary Mignot.  She was near marrying a young man of La Gardie, who afterwards entered the Swedish service, and became a field-marshal in that country.  Her first husband was, if I mistake not, a Procureur of Grenoble; her second was the Marshal de l’H`opital; and her third is supposed to have been Casimir, the ex-King of Poland, who had retired, after his abdication, to the monastery of St Germain des Pr`es.  It does not, however, appear certain whether Casimir actually married her or not.-D.

(118) Lady Pomfret and Princess Craon did not visit at Florence, upon a dispute of precedence.

(119) The Pretender, when in Lorraine, lived in Prince Craon’s house.

60 Letter 22 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, April 2, 1750.