This has been writ this week, and waiting for a conveyance, and as yet has got none.  Favre tells me you are recovered, but you don’t tell me so yourself.  I enclose a trifle that I wrote lately,(920) which got about and has made enormous noise in a city where they run and cackle after an event, like a parcel of hens after an accidental husk of a grape.  It has made me the fashion, and made Madame de Boufflers and the Prince of Conti very angry with me; the former intending to be rapt to the Temple of Fame by clinging to Rousseau’s Armenian robe.  I am peevish that with his parts he should be such a mountebank:  but what made me more peevish was, that after receiving Wilkes with the greatest civilities, he paid court to Mr. Hume by complaining of Wilkes’s visit and intrusion.(921) Upon the whole, I would not but have come hither; for, since I am doomed to live in England, it is some comfort to have seen that the French are ten times more contemptible than we are.  I am a little ungrateful; but I cannot help seeing with my eyes, though I find other people make nothing of seeing without theirs.  I have endless histories to amuse you with when we meet, which shall be at the end of March.  It is much more tiresome to be fashionable than unpopular; I am used to the latter, and know how to behave under it:  but I cannot stand for member of parliament of Paris.  Adieu!

(918) La Comtesse de la Marche, princess of Modena, married to the only son of the Prince de Conti.  Le Comte de la Marche was the only one of the princes of the blood who uniformly sided with the court in the disputes with the Parliament of Paris.-E.

(919) The Comte de St. Germain had acquired a considerable military reputation in France by his conduct at Corbach in 1760; when he commanded the reserve, and saved the army by supporting the rear-guard and allowing the whole body to retire upon Cassel.  Considering himself ill-used by the Marshal de Broglio, his commander-in-chief, he obtained leave to retire from the French service, and entered that of Denmark, from which he retired into private life in 1774.  From this retirement he was summoned by Louis xvi. upon the death of the Comte de Muy, minister-at-war.-E.

(920) The letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau.-E.

(921) “One evening, at the Mitre, Johnson said sarcastically to me, ’It seems, Sir, you have kept very good company abroad—­ Rousseau and Wilkes!’ I answered with a smile, ’My dear Sir, you don’t call Rousseau bad company:  do you r(@ally think him a f bad man?’ Johnson.  ’Sir, if you are talking jestingly of this, I don’t talk with you.  If you mean to be serious, I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been.  Three or four nations have expelled him, and it is a shame that he is protected in this country.  Rousseau, Sir, is a very bad man.  I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years.  Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations.’ " Boswell, vol. ii. p. 314, ed. 1835.-E.