The Cardinal de Noailles is unquestionably a virtuous man; it would be a very good thing if all the others were like him.  We have here four of them, and each is of a different character.  Three of them resemble each other in a certain particular—­they are as false as counterfeit coin; in every other respect they are directly opposite.  The Cardinal de Polignac is well made, sensible, and insinuating, and his voice is very agreeable; but he meddles too much with politics, and is too much occupied with seeking favour.  The Cardinal de Rohan has a handsome face, as his mother had, but his figure is despicable.  He is as vain as a peacock, and fancies that there is not his equal in the whole world.  He is a tricking intriguer, the slave of the Jesuits, and fancies he rules everything, while in fact he rules nothing.  The Cardinal de Bissi is as ugly and clumsy as a peasant, proud, false and wicked, and yet a most fulsome flatterer; his falsehood may be seen in his very eyes; his talent he turns to mischievous purposes.  In short, he has all the exterior of a Tartuffe.  These Cardinals could, if they chose, sell the Cardinal de Noailles in a sack, for they are all much more cunning than he is.

With respect to the pregnancy of the Queen of England, the consort of James II., whom we saw at Saint-Germain, it is well known that her daughter-in-law maintains that she was not with child; but it seems to me that the Queen might easily have taken measures to prove the contrary.  I spoke about it to Her Majesty myself.  She replied “that she had begged the Princess Anne to satisfy herself by the evidence of her own senses, and to feel the motion of the child;” but the latter refused, and the Queen added “that she never could have supposed that the persons who had been in the habit of seeing her daily during her pregnancy could doubt the fact of her having been delivered.”

[On the dethronement of James II., the party of William, Prince of Orange, asserted that the Prince of Orange was a supposititious child, and accused James of having spirited away the persona who could have proved the birth of the Queen’s child, and of having made the midwife leave the kingdom precipitately, she being the only person who had actually seen the child born.]

A song has been made upon Lord Bolingbroke on the subject of his passion for a young girl who escaped from her convent.  Some persons say that the girl was a professed nun.  She ran after the Duke Regent a long time, but could not accomplish her intention.

Lady Gordon, the grandaunt of Lord Huntley, was my dame d’atour for a considerable period.  She was a singular person, and always plunged into reveries.  Once when she was in bed and going to seal a letter, she dropped the wax upon her own thigh and burnt herself dreadfully.  At another time, when she was also in bed and engaged in play, she threw the dice upon the ground and spat in the bed.  Once, too, she spat in the mouth of my