I have had no letter from you since your arrival at Paris, though you must have been long enough there to have written me two or three.  In about ten or twelve days I propose leaving this place, and going to London; I have found considerable benefit by my stay here, but not all that I want.  Make my compliments to Lord Albemarle.

LETTER CLXXXIII

Bath, November 28, 1752

My dear friend:  Since my last to you, I have read Madame Maintenon’s “Letters”; I am sure they are genuine, and they both entertained and informed me.  They have brought me acquainted with the character of that able and artful lady; whom I am convinced that I now know much better than her directeur the Abby de Fenelon (afterward Archbishop of Cambray) did, when he wrote her the 185th letter; and I know him the better too for that letter.  The Abby, though brimful of the divine love, had a great mind to be first minister, and cardinal, in order, no doubt, to have an opportunity of doing the more good.  His being ‘directeur’ at that time to Madame Maintenon, seemed to be a good step toward those views.  She put herself upon him for a saint, and he was weak enough to believe it; he, on the other hand, would have put himself upon her for a saint too, which, I dare say, she did not believe; but both of them knew that it was necessary for them to appear saints to Lewis the Fourteenth, who they were very sure was a bigot.  It is to be presumed, nay, indeed, it is plain by that 185th letter that Madame Maintenon had hinted to her directeur some scruples of conscience, with relation to her commerce with the King; and which I humbly apprehend to have been only some scruples of prudence, at once to flatter the bigot character, and increase the desires of the King.  The pious Abbe, frightened out of his wits, lest the King should impute to the ‘directeur’ any scruples or difficulties which he might meet with on the part of the lady, writes her the above-mentioned letter; in which he not only bids her not tease the King by advice and exhortations, but to have the utmost submission to his will; and, that she may not mistake the nature of that submission, he tells her it is the same that Sarah had for Abraham; to which submission Isaac perhaps was owing.  No bawd could have written a more seducing letter to an innocent country girl, than the ‘directeur’ did to his ‘penitente’; who I dare say had no occasion for his good advice.  Those who would justify the good ‘directeur’, alias the pimp, in this affair, must not attempt to do it by saying that the King and Madame Maintenon were at that time privately married; that the directeur knew it; and that this was the meaning of his ‘enigme’.  That is absolutely impossible; for that private marriage must have removed all scruples between the parties; nay, could not have been contracted upon any other principle, since it was kept private, and consequently