How are the mighty fallen!  Yes, yes, Madam, I am as like the Duc de Richelieu as two peas; but then they are two old withered gray peas.  Do you remember the fable of Cupid and Death, and what a piece of work they made with hustling their arrows together?  This is just my case:  Love might shoot at me, but it was with a gouty arrow.  I have had a relapse in both feet, and kept my bed six days but the fit seems to be going off; my heart can already go alone, and my feet promise themselves the mighty luxury of a cloth shoe in two or three days.  Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay,(895) who are here, and are, alas! to carry this, have been of great comfort to me, and have brought their delightful little daughter, who is as quick as Ariel.  Mr. Ramsay could want no assistance from me:  what do we both exist upon here, Madam, but your bounty and charity?  When did you ever leave one of your friends in want of another?  Madame Geotrrin came and sat two hours last night by my bedside:  I could have sworn it had been my Lady Hervey,(896) she was so good to me.  It was with so much sense, information, instruction, and correction!  The manner of the latter charms me.  I never saw any body in my days that catches one’s faults and vanities and impositions so quick, that explains them to one so clearly, and convinces one so easily.  I never liked to be set right before!  You cannot imagine how I taste it!  I make her both my confessor and director, and beam to think I shall be a reasonable creature at last, which I had never intended to be.  The next time I see her, I believe I shall say, “Oh!  Common Sense, sit down:  I have been thinking so and so; is not it absurd?” for t’other sense and wisdom, I never liked them; I shall now hate them for her sake.  If it was worth her while, I assure your ladyship she might govern me like a child.(897)

The Duc de Nivernois too is astonishingly good to me.  In short, Madam, I am going down hill, but the sun sets pleasingly.  Your two other friends have been in Paris; but I was confined, and could not wait on them.  I passed a whole evening with Lady Mary Chabot most agreeably:  she charged me over and over with a thousand compliments to your ladyship.  For sights, alas! and pilgrimages, they have been cut short!  I had destined the fine days of October to excursions; but you know, Madam, what it is to reckon without one’s host, the gout.  It makes such a coward of me, that I shall be afraid almost of entering a church.  I have lost, too, the Dumenil in Ph`edre and Merope, two of her principal parts, but I hope not irrecoverably.

Thank you, Madam, for the Taliacotian extract:  it diverted me much.  It is true, in general I neither see nor desire to see our wretched political trash:  I am sick of it up to the fountain-head.  It was my principal motive for coming hither; and had long been my determination, the first moment I should be at liberty, to abandon it all.  I have acted from no views of interest; I have shown I did not; I have not disgraced myself--and I must be free.  My comfort is, that, if I am blamed, it will be by all parties.  A little peace of mind for the rest of my days is all I ask, to balance the gout.