Do you visit Soltikow, the Russian Minister, whose house, I am told, is the great scene of pleasures at Hamburg?  His mistress, I take for granted, is by this time dead, and he wears some other body’s shackles.  Her death comes with regard to the King of Prussia, ’comme la moutarde apres diner’.  I am curious to see what tyrant will succeed her, not by divine, but by military right; for, barbarous as they are now, and still more barbarous as they have been formerly, they have had very little regard to the more barbarous notion of divine, indefeasible, hereditary right.

The Praetorian bands, that is, the guards, I presume, have been engaged in the interests of the Imperial Prince; but still I think that little John of Archangel will be heard upon this occasion, unless prevented by a quieting draught of hemlock or nightshade; for I suppose they are not arrived to the politer and genteeler poisons of Acqua Tufana,—­[Acqua Tufana, a Neapolitan slow poison, resembling clear water, and invented by a woman at Naples, of the name of Tufana.]—­sugar-plums, etc.

Lord Halifax has accepted his old employment, with the honorary addition of the Cabinet Council.  And so we heartily wish you a goodnight.

LETTER CCXII

Bath, November 4, 1757

My dear friend:  The Sons of Britain, like those of Noah, must cover their parent’s shame as well as they can; for to retrieve its honor is now too late.  One would really think that our ministers and generals were all as drunk as the Patriarch was.  However, in your situation, you must not be Cham; but spread your cloak over our disgrace, as far as it will go.  M——­t calls aloud for a public trial; and in that, and that only, the public agree with him.  There will certainly be one, but of what kind is not yet fixed.  Some are for a parliamentary inquiry, others for a martial one; neither will, in my opinion, discover the true secret; for a secret there most unquestionably is.  Why we stayed six whole days in the island of Aix, mortal cannot imagine; which time the French employed, as it was obvious they would, in assembling their troops in the neighborhood of Rochfort, and making our attempt then really impracticable.  The day after we had taken the island of Aix, your friend, Colonel Wolf, publicly offered to do the business with five hundred men and three ships only.  In all these complicated political machines there are so many wheels, that it is always difficult, and sometimes im possible, to guess which of them gives direction to the whole.  Mr. Pitt is convinced that the principal wheels, or, if you will, the spoke in his wheel, came from Stade.  This is certain, at least that M——­t was the man of confidence with that person.  Whatever be the truth of the case, there is, to be sure, hitherto an ‘hiatus valde deflendus’.