It will look like a month since I wrote to you; but I have been coming, and am.  Madame du Deffand has been so ill, that the day she was seized I thought she would not live till night.  Her Herculean weakness, which could not resist strawberries and cream after supper, has surmounted all the ups and downs which followed her excess; but her impatience to go every where, and to do every thing has been attended with a kind of relapse, and another kind of giddiness:  so that I am not quite easy about her, as they allow her to take no nourishment to recruit, and she will die of inanition, if she does not live upon it.  She cannot lift her head from the pillow without `etourdissemens; and yet her spirits gallop faster than any body’s, and so do her repartees.  She has a great supper to-night for the Due de Choiseul, and was in such a passion yesterday with her cook about it, and that put Tonton into such a rage, that nos dames de Saint Joseph thought the devil or the philosophers were flying away with their convert!  As I have scarce quitted her, I can have had nothing to tell you.  If she gets well, as I trust, I shall set out on the 12th; but I cannot leave her in any danger—­though I shall run many myself, if I stay longer.  I have kept such bad hours with this malade that I have had alarms of gout; and bad weather, worse inns, and a voyage in winter, will ill suit me.  The fans arrived at a propitious moment, and she immediately had them opened on her bed, and felt all the patterns, and had all the papers described.  She was all satisfaction and thanks, and swore me to do her full justice to Lady Ailesbury, and Mrs. Damer.  Lord Harrington and Lady Harriet are arrived; but have announced and persisted in a strict invisibility.  I know nothing of my ch`ere patrie, but what I learn from the London Chronicle; and that tells me, that the trading towns are suing out lettres de noblesse, that is, entreating the King to put an end to commerce, that they may all be gentlemen.  Here agriculture, economy, reformation, philosophy, are the bon-ton even at court.  The two nations seem to have crossed over and figured in; but as people that copy take the bad with the good, as well as the good with the bad, there was two days ago a great horserace in the plain de Sablon, between the Comte d’Artois,(229) the Duc de Chartres,(230) Monsieur de Conflans, and the Duc de Lauzun.(231) The latter won by the address of a little English postilion, who is in such fashion, that I don’t know whether the Academy will not give him for the subject of an `eloge.

The Due de Choiseul, I said, is here; and, as he has a second time put off his departure, cela fait beaucoup de bruit.  I shall not at all be surprised if he resumes the reins, as (forgive me a pun) he has the Reine at ready.  Messrs. de Turgot and Malesherbes certainly totter—­but I shall tell you no more till I see you; for though this goes by a private hand, it is so private, that I don’t know it, being an English merchant’s, who lodges in this hotel, and whom I do not know by sight:  so, perhaps, I may bring you word of this letter myself.  I flatter myself Lady Ailesbury’s arm has recovered its straightness and its cunning. . .