cold weather. I have read your _Reine Marguerite_, and will return it
you when you please. If you will have my opinion of her, I think she had
a good deal of wit, and a great deal of patience for a woman of so high
a spirit. She speaks with too much indifference of her husband's several
amours, and commends Bussy as if she were a little concerned in him. I
think her a better sister than a wife, and believe she might have made a
better wife to a better husband. But the story of Mademoiselle de
Tournon is so sad, that when I had read it I was able to go no further,
and was fain to take up something else to divert myself withal. Have you
read _Cléopâtre_? I have six tomes on't here that I can lend you if you
have not; there are some stories in't you will like, I believe. But what
an ass am I to think you can be idle enough at London to read romance!
No, I'll keep them till you come hither; here they may be welcome to you
for want of better company. Yet, that you may not imagine we are quite
out of the world here, and so be frighted from coming, I can assure you
we are seldom without news, such as it is; and at this present we do
abound with stories of my Lady Sunderland and Mr. Smith; with what
reverence he approaches her, and how like a gracious princess she
receives him, that they say 'tis worth one's going twenty miles to see
it. All our ladies are mightily pleased with the example, but I do not
find that the men intend to follow it, and I'll undertake Sir Solomon
Justinian wishes her in the Indias, for fear she should pervert his new
wife.

Your fellow-servant kisses your hands, and says, "If you mean to make
love to her old woman this is the best time you can take, for she is
dying; this cold weather kills her, I think." It has undone me, I am
sure, in killing an old knight that I have been waiting for this seven
year, and now he dies and will leave me nothing, I believe, but leaves a
rich widow for somebody. I think you had best come a wooing to her; I