she has reason to be so, toutes choses bien considerees.  If I had been a woman, and could not have been my own mistress, I should have preferred subjection to a husband, whom I approved of, to a Queen (sic).  We talked a great deal of the menage, and I am to take my chair and have my convert there when I please; and it is (a) stipulation that not a petit pot is to be added on my account.  She is to be married, I find, at the beginning of the new year, and she is to have immediately four children, three boys and one girl.  I should on her account have liked it as well if she had begun sur nouveaux frais; but, it not being so, I think that the three boys and one girl is a better circumstance than if there had been more girls.  He is really, as far as I can judge of him, a very worthy man, and I believe will make her a very good husband, and I have no doubt but that she will receive from his family as much regard and attention as any other woman would have had.  When I left St. James’s, I went in search of Me de Boufflers, and found her at Grenier’s Hotel, which looks to me more like an hospital than anything else.  Such rooms, such a crowd of miserable wretches, escaped from plunder and massacre, and Me de Boufflers among them with I do not know how many beggars in her suite, her belle fille (qui n’est pas belle, par parenthese), the Comtesse Emilie, a maid with the little child in her arms, a boy, her grandson, called Le Chevalier de Cinque minutes, I cannot explain to you why; a pretty fair child, just inoculated who does not as yet know so much French as I do, but understood me, and was much pleased with my caresses.  It was really altogether a piteous sight.  When I saw her last, she was in a handsome hotel dans le quartier du Temple—­a splendid supper—­Pharaon; I was placed between Monsr.  Fayette and his wife.  This Fayette(274) is her nephew, and has been the chief instrument of her misfortunes, and I hope, par la suite, of his own.  I said tout ce qui m’est venu en tete de plus consolant.

I would, if I had had time, have gone from her to Me la Duchesse de Biron, but I went to Lady Lucan, with whom I have tried to menager some petit-petits soupers for these poor distressed people.  That must be, when Lord Lucan returns from Lord Spencer’s, after the X’ning.

The Duke of Orleans, they tell me, goes all over the city to borrow immense sums, offering as a security his whole revenue.  He cannot get a guinea, or deserves one.  He is universally despised and detested.  Me Buffon is said de lui avoir fait le plus grand sacrifice, sans doute, le sacrifice de sa reputation et de son etat.  Que peut-on demander davantage?