Calonne would have entertained yesterday.  You never in your life saw any man so inveterate as he was against M. de la Fayette, and, to say the truth, he had reason, if all was true which he imputed’to him, as I believe it was.  But what diverted me the most was, that Fayette had seriously proposed to make him, Calonne, King of Madagascar.  Surely there never was, since the Earl of Warwick’s time, such a king-maker.  I would to God that he had accepted of the diadem, but then perhaps he would not have dined with us yesterday.  Il en contait a Madame la Duchesse, and sat at dinner between her and Lady E. Forster, avec qui je faisois la conversation; the Duke over against us on the other side of the table, comme la Statue dans le Festin de Pierre, never changing a muscle of his face.  The Marquis was above, and there Me la Duchesse lui donna a diner.  I was determined upon an audience, and found l’heure du berger.  He received me avec un sourire le plus gracieux du monde, and I was obliged to present my address of compliments.  But I think that the Nurse is a bad physiognomiste if she did not see that what I said, and what I thought, were not d’accord.  He is like the Duke if he is like anything, but a more uninteresting countenance I never saw—­ fair, white, fate, sans charactere.  In short, on a beau faire, on a beau dire.  If un enfant ne vous tient d’une maniere ou d’autre, I cannot admire it as I am expected to do; and what a difference that makes will be seen two months hence.  Toutes mes affections parlent due meme principe.  The Duchess offended me much by coming with a couronne civique, which is a chaplet of oak leaves.  In England they are a symbol of loyalty.  Il n’en (est) pas de meme en France.  I asked if she wore it before the Queen; I was told yes.  Je ne comprens rien a cela.

The whole behaviour of the Queen, in her present wretched, humiliated state, is touchante et interessante au dernier point.  Elle ne rit, que quand elle ne songe pas a ses malheurs.  At other times she is, as Polinitz says of K(ing) James’s Queen, when he saw her after the Revolution, une Arethuse.  M. le M(arquis) de la Fayette comes to the Tuilleries, and although he be really no more or less than the jailer, he is received with graciousness.

But now, four les Evangiles du jour.  I had a letter from Warner this morning before I left Richmond, dated last Thursday night.  Your brother’s courier did not, however, leave Paris till the morning of Friday.  Warner’s words are these:—­“The courier goes to carry the news of the Decree, of fitting out 25 ships of the line, and adhering to the Family Compact in the defensive Articles, which looks so like a war that it frightens us with the apprehension of being sent packing home to you, or rather without packing.”

If the consequence of a war is your brother’s return to this country, I do not think it a misfortune to him, and I wish, no other may happen to us, than the expense at which we must be to support one campaign against these United Powers.  Still I am of opinion that peace will follow immediately these preparations.  But Calonne alarmed me yesterday, when he said, that he thought that the National Assembly would draw them into a war with us.  He had not then received his dispatches.  I shall hear a great deal of it to-day, true or false, from D’Oraison.