than I had said: she frowned, and made him signs; but she had wound up
his clack, and there was no stopping it. The moment she grew angry, the
lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at
the head of a numerous sect; but, when I left a triumphant party in
England, I did not come here to be at the head of a fashion. However, I
have been sent for about like an African prince, or a learned
canary-bird, and was, in particular, carried by force to the Princess of
Talmond,[1] the Queen's cousin, who lives in a charitable apartment in
the Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed hung with saints and
Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast chambers, by two blinking
tapers. I stumbled over a cat and a footstool in my journey to her
presence. She could not find a syllable to say to me, and the visit
ended with her begging a lap-dog. Thank the Lord! though this is the
first month, it is the last week of my reign; and I shall resign my
crown with great satisfaction to a _bouillie_ of chestnuts, which is
just invented, and whose annals will be illustrated by so many
indigestions, that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks.
I will enclose the fatal letter[2] after I have finished this enormous
one; to which I will only add, that nothing has interrupted my Sévigné
researches but the frost. The Abbé de Malesherbes has given me full
power to ransack Livry. I did not tell you, that by great accident, when
I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on an original picture of the
Comte de Grammont. Adieu! You are generally in London in March; I shall
be there by the end of it.[3]

[Footnote 1: The Princess of Talmond was born in Poland, and said to be
allied to the Queen, Marie Leczinska, with whom she came to France, and
there married a prince of the house of Bouillon.]

[Footnote 2: The letter from the King of Prussia to Rousseau.--WALPOLE.]