the globe, and me on the other, my affections shall pervade its whole mass to reach them.  Knowing then my determination, attempt not to disturb it.  If you can at any time furnish matter for their amusement, it will be the office of a good neighbor to do it.  I will, in like manner, seize any occasion which may offer, to do the like good turn for you with Condorcet, Rittenhouse, Madison, La Cretelle, or any other of those worthy sons of science, whom you so justly prize.

I thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the dialogue.  So I put an end to it by calling for my nightcap.  Methinks, I hear you wish to Heaven I had called a little sooner, and so spared you the ennui of such a sermon.  I did not interrupt them sooner, because I was in a mood for hearing sermons.  You, too, were the subject; and on such a thesis, I never think the theme long; not even if I am to write it, and that slowly and awkwardly, as now, with the left hand.  But that you may not be discouraged from a correspondence, which begins so formidably, I will promise you, on my honor, that my future letters shall be of a reasonable length.  I will even agree to express but half my esteem for you, for fear of cloying you with too full a dose.  But on your part, no curtailing.  If your letters are as long as the Bible, they will appear short to me.  Only let them be brim full of affection.  I shall read them with the dispositions with which Arlequin, in Les Deux Billets, spelt the words ‘Je t’aime,’ and wished that the whole alphabet had entered into their composition.

We have had incessant rains since your departure.  These make me fear for your health, as well as that you had an uncomfortable journey.  The same cause has prevented me from being able to give you any account of your friends here.  This voyage to Fontainebleau will probably send the Count de Moutier and the Marquis de Brehan to America.  Danquerville promised to visit me, but has not done it as yet.  De la Tude comes sometimes to take family soup with me, and entertains me with anecdotes of his five and thirty years’ imprisonment.  How fertile is the mind of man, which can make the Bastille and dungeon of Vincennes yield interesting anecdotes!  You know this was for making four verses on Madame de Pompadour.  But I think you told me you did not know the verses.  They were these.

     ’Sans esprit, sans sentiment,
     Sans etre belle, ni neuve,
     En France on peut avoir le premier amant: 
     Pompadour en est Tepreuve.’

I have read the memoir of his three escapes.  As to myself, my health is good, except my wrist, which mends slowly, and my mind, which mends not at all, but broods constantly over your departure.  The lateness of the season obliges me to decline my journey into the south of France.  Present me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, and receive me into your own recollection with a partiality and warmth, proportioned not to my own poor merit, but to the sentiments of sincere affection and esteem, with which I have the honor to be, my Dear Madam,