or I cannot have the least satisfaction.  This will convince you how readily I comply with another of your precepts, walking as soon as am able.—­For receipts, you may trust me for making use of none; I would not see a physician at the worst, but have quacked as boldly as quacks treat others.  I laughed at your idea of quality receipts, it came so apropos.  There is not a man or woman here that is not a perfect old nurse, and who does not talk gruel and anatomy with equal fluency and ignorance.  One instance shall serve:  Madame de Bouzols, Marshal Berwick’s daughter, assured me there was nothing so good for the gout, as to preserve the parings of my nails in a bottle close stopped.  When I try any illustrious nostrum, I shall give the preference to this.

So much for the gout!(904) I told you what was coming.  As to the ministry, I know and care very little about them.  I told you and told them long ago, that if ever a change happened I would bid adieu to politics for ever.  Do me the Justice to allow that I have not altered with the time.  I was so impatient to put this resolution in execution that I hurried out of England before I was sufficiently recovered.  I shall not run the same hazard again in haste; but will stay here till I am perfectly well, and the season of warm weather coming on or arrived; though the charms of Paris have not the least attraction for me, nor would keep me an hour on their own account.  For the city itself, I cannot conceive where my eyes were:  it Is the ugliest beastliest town in the universe.  I have not seen a mouthful of verdure out of it, nor have they any thing green but their treillage and window-shutters.  Trees cut into fire-shovels, and stuck into pedestals of chalk, Compose their country.  Their boasted knowledge of society is reduced to talking of their suppers, and every malady they have about them, or know of.  The Dauphin is at the point of death; every morning the physicians frame in account of him; and happy is he or she who can produce a copy of this lie, called a bulletin.  The night before last, one of these was produced at supper where I was; it was read, and said he had une evacuation foetide.  I beg your pardon, though you are not at supper.  The old lady of the house(905) (who by the way is quite blind, was the Regent’s mistress for a fortnight, and is very agreeable) called out, “Oh! they have forgot to mention that he threw down his chamber-pot, and was forced to change his bed.”  There were present several women of the first rank; as Madame de la Vali`ere, whom you remember Duchesse de Vaujour, and who is still miraculously pretty, though fifty-three; a very handsome Madame de Forcalquier, and others—­nor was this conversation at all particular to that evening.