is so far a disgrace that, I’ll assure you, a lady, who is very much my friend here, told me but yesterday, how much I was obliged to her for justifying my conduct in a conversation on my subject, where it was publicly asserted that I could not possibly have common sense, that I had been about town above a fortnight, and had made no steps towards commencing an amour.  My friend pleaded for me that my stay was uncertain; and she believed that was the cause of my seeming stupidity and this was all she could find to say in my justification.”

But Lady Mary, though only twenty-seven, and therefore, according to her own account, much too youthful for the gallants of Vienna, yet had an experience: 

“But one of the pleasantest adventures I ever met in my life was last night, and which will give you a just idea after what a delicate manner the belles passions are managed in this country.  I was at the assembly of the Countess of ——­, and the young Count of ——­ led me down stairs, and he asked me how long I intended to stay here?  I made answer that my stay depended on the emperor, and it was not in my power to determine it.  Well, madam, (said he), whether your time here is to be long or short, I think you ought to pass it agreeably, and to that end you must engage in a little affair of the heart.—­My heart (answered I gravely enough) does not engage very easily, and I have no design of parting with it.  I see, madam, (said he sighing,) by the ill nature of that answer, that I am not to hope for it, which is a great mortification to me that am charmed with you.  But, however, I am still devoted to your service; and since I am not worthy of entertaining you myself, do me the honour of letting me know whom you like best among us, and I’ll engage to manage the affair entirely to your satisfaction.—­You may judge in what manner I should have received this compliment in my own country, but I was well enough acquainted with the way of this, to know that he really intended me an obligation, and thanked him with a grave courtesy for his zeal to serve me, and only assured him that I had no occasion to make use of it.

“Thus you see, my dear, gallantry and good-breeding are as different, in different climates, as morality and religion.  Who have the rightest notions of both, we shall never know till the day of judgment, for which great day of eclaircissement, I own there is very little impatience in your, &c.”

Love-making was indeed one of the principal pastimes at Vienna.  There was Count Tarrocco (who was in attendance on the Prince of Portugal), and, as she told Lady Mar, “just such a Roman Catholic as you.”  “He succeeds greatly with the devout beauties here,” she went on to say; “his first overtures in gallantry are disguised under the luscious strains of spiritual love, that were sung formerly by the sublimely voluptuous Fenelon and the tender Madam Guion, who turned the spirit of carnal love to divine objects; thus the Count begins