I am much indebted to you for your kind letter and advice; and though it is late to thank you for it, it is at least a stronger proof that I do not forget it.  However, I am a little obstinate, as you know, on the chapter of health, and have persisted through this Siberian winter in not adding a grain to my clothes, and going open-breasted without an under waistcoat.  In short, though I like extremely to live, it must be in my own way, as long as I can:  it is not youth I court, but liberty; and I think making oneself tender is issuing a general warrant against one’s own person.  I suppose I shall submit to confinement when I cannot help it; but I am indifferent enough to life not to care if it ends soon after my prison begins.

I have not delayed so long to answer your letter, from not thinking of it, or from want of matter, but from want of time.  I am constantly occupied, engaged, amused, till I cannot bring a hundredth part of what I have to say into the compass of a letter.  You will lose nothing by this:  you know my volubility, when I am full of new subjects; and I have at least many hours of conversation for you at my return.  One does not learn a whole nation in four or five months; but, for the time, few, I believe, have seen, studied, or got so much acquainted with the French as I have.

By what I said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their people of quality atheists—­at least, not the men.  Happily for them, poor souls! they are not capable of going so far into thinking.  They assent to a great deal, because it is the fashion, and because they don’t know how to contradict.  They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic religion, because it is quite exploded; but I am convinced they believe it in their hearts.  They hate the Parliaments and the philosophers, and are rejoiced that they may still idolise royalty.  At present, too, they are a little triumphant:  the Court has shown a little spirit, and the Parliaments much less:  but as the Duc de Choiseul, who is very fluttering, unsettled, and inclined to the philosophers, has made a compromise with the Parliament of Bretagne, the Parliaments might venture out again, if, as I fancy will be the case, they are not glad to drop a cause, of which they began to be a little weary of the inconveniences.

The generality of the men, and more than the generality are dull and empty.  They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness.  However, as their high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no longer assign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved, instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, impertinent.  I have wondered, knowing my own countrymen, that we had attained such a superiority.  I wonder no longer, and have a little more respect for English heads than I had.