in his way to you brought me acquainted with many anecdotes conformable to the idea I had conceived of him, got about, was liked much more than it deserved, spread like wild-fire, and made me the subject of conversation.  Rousseau’s devotees were offended.  Madame de Boufflers, with a tone of sentiment, and the accents of lamenting humanity, abused me heartily, and then complained to myself with the utmost softness.  I acted contrition, but had liked to have spoiled all, by growing dreadfully tired of a second lecture from the Prince of Conti, who took up the ball, and made himself the hero of a history wherein he had nothing to do.  I listened, did not understand half he said (nor he either), forgot the rest, said Yes when I should have said No, yawned when I should have smiled, and was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon.  Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty times more than I had said:  she frowned, and made him signs; but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it.  The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a numerous sect; but, when I left a triumphant party in England, I did not come here to be at the head of a fashion.  However, I have been sent for about like an African prince, or a learned canary-bird, and was, in particular, carried by force to the Princess of Talmond,[1] the Queen’s cousin, who lives in a charitable apartment in the Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed hung with saints and Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast chambers, by two blinking tapers.  I stumbled over a cat and a footstool in my journey to her presence.  She could not find a syllable to say to me, and the visit ended with her begging a lap-dog.  Thank the Lord! though this is the first month, it is the last week of my reign; and I shall resign my crown with great satisfaction to a bouillie of chestnuts, which is just invented, and whose annals will be illustrated by so many indigestions, that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks.  I will enclose the fatal letter[2] after I have finished this enormous one; to which I will only add, that nothing has interrupted my Sevigne researches but the frost.  The Abbe de Malesherbes has given me full power to ransack Livry.  I did not tell you, that by great accident, when I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on an original picture of the Comte de Grammont.  Adieu!  You are generally in London in March; I shall be there by the end of it.[3]

[Footnote 1:  The Princess of Talmond was born in Poland, and said to be allied to the Queen, Marie Leczinska, with whom she came to France, and there married a prince of the house of Bouillon.]

[Footnote 2:  The letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau.—­WALPOLE.]