From Lyons to Nismes I have been nourished with the remains of Roman grandeur.  They have always brought you to my mind, because I know your affection for whatever is Roman and noble.  At Vienne I thought of you.  But I am glad you were not there; for you would have seen me more angry than I hope you will ever see me.  The Praetorian palace, as it is called, comparable, for its fine proportions, to the Maison Quarree, defaced by the barbarians who have converted it to its present purpose, its beautiful fluted Corinthian columns cut out in part to make space for Gothic windows, and hewed down in the residue to the plane of the building, was enough, you must admit, to disturb my composure.  At Orange, too, I thought of you.  I was sure you had seen with pleasure the sublime triumphal arch of Marius at the entrance of the city.  I went then to the Arena.  Would you believe, Madam, that in this eighteenth century, in France, under the reign of Louis XVI., they are at this moment pulling down the circular wall of this superb remain to pave a road?  And that too from a hill which is itself an entire mass of stone, just as fit, and more accessible?  A former intendant, a M. de Basville, has rendered his memory dear to the traveller and amateur, by the pains he took to preserve and restore these monuments of antiquity.  The present one (I do not know who he is) is demolishing the object to make a good road to it.  I thought of you again, and I was then in great good humor, at the Pont du Gard, a sublime antiquity, and well preserved.  But most of all here, where Roman taste, genius, and magnificence excite ideas analogous to yours at every step.  I could no longer oppose the inclination to avail myself of your permission to write to you, a permission given with too much complaisance by you, and used by me with too much indiscretion.  Madame de Tott did me the same honor.

But she being only the descendant of some of those puny heroes who boiled their own kettles before the walls of Troy, I shall write to her from a Grecian, rather than a Roman canton:  when I shall find myself, for example, among her Phocaean relations at Marseilles.

Loving, as you do, Madam, the precious remains of antiquity, loving architecture, gardening, a warm sun, and a clear sky, I wonder you have never thought of moving Chaville to Nismes.  This, as you know, has not always been deemed impracticable; and, therefore, the next time a Surintendant des bailments du roi, after the example of M. Colbert, sends persons to Nismes to move the Maison Quarree to Paris, that they may not come empty-handed, desire them to bring Chaville with them to replace it. A propos of Paris.  I have now been three weeks from there, without knowing any thing of what has passed.  I suppose I shall meet it all at Aix, where I have directed my letters to be lodged, poste restante.  My journey has given me leisure to reflect on this Assemblee des Notables.  Under a good and