Long before his son’s year in Italy was completed, Chesterfield began preparing him for Paris.  For the first six months Stanhope was to live in an academy with young Frenchmen of fashion; after that, to have lodgings of his own.  The mornings were to belong to study, or serious conversation with men of learning or figure; the afternoons, to exercise; the evenings to be free for balls, the opera, or play.  These are the pleasures of a gentleman, for which his father is willing to pay generously.  But he will not, he points out frequently, subscribe to the extravagance of a rake.  The eighteen-year-old Stanhope is to have his coach, his two valets and a footman, the very best French clothes—­in fact, everything that is sensible.  But he shall not be allowed money for dozens of cane-heads, or fancy snuff-boxes, or excessive gaming, or the support of opera-singers.  One handsome snuff-box, one handsome sword, and gaming only when the presence of the ladies keeps down high stakes; but no tavern-suppers—­no low company which costs so much more than dissipations among one’s equals.  There is no need for a young man of any address to make love to his laundress,[372] as long as ladies of his own class stoop to folly.

Above all, Stanhope is not to associate with his own countrymen in Paris.  On them Chesterfield is never tired of pouring the vials of scorn.  He began while Stanhope was at Leipsic to point out the deficiences of English boys: 

“They are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster, and the Fellows of their college.  If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin; but not one word of modern history, or modern languages.  Thus prepared, they go abroad as they call it; but in truth, they stay at home all that while; for being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at least none good, but dine and sup with one another only, at the tavern.[373]...

“The life of les Milords Anglais is regularly, or if you will, irregularly, this.  As soon as they rise, which is very late, they breakfast together to the utter loss of two good morning hours.  Then they go by coachfuls to the Palais, the Invalides, and Notre-Dame; from thence to the English coffee-house where they make up their tavern party for dinner.  From dinner, where they drink quick, they adjourn in clusters to the play, where they crowd up the stage, drest up in very fine clothes, very ill made by a Scotch or Irish tailor.  From the play to the tavern again, where they get very drunk, and where they either quarrel among themselves, or sally forth, commit some riot in the streets, and are taken up by the watch."[374]

To avoid these monsters, and to cultivate the best French society, was what a wise young man must do in Paris.  He must establish an intimacy with the best French families.  If he became fashionable among the French, he would be fashionable in London.