H---- is my solicitor. I found him so when I was ten years old--at my
uncle's death--and he was continued in the management of my legal
business. He asked me, by a civil epistle, as an old acquaintance of
his family, to be present at the marriage of Miss H----. I went very
reluctantly, one misty morning (for I had been up at two balls all
night), to witness the ceremony, which I could not very well refuse
without affronting a man who had never offended me. I saw nothing
particular in the marriage. Of course I could not know the
preliminaries, except from what he said, not having been present at
the wooing, nor after it, for I walked home, and they went into the
country as soon as they had promised and vowed. Out of this simple
fact I hear the Debats de Paris has quoted Miss H. as 'autrefois trés
liée avec le célebre,' &c. &c. I am obliged to him for the celebrity,
but beg leave to decline the liaison, which is quite untrue; my
liaison was with the father, in the unsentimental shape of long
lawyers' bills, through the medium of which I have had to pay him ten
or twelve thousand pounds within these few years. She was not pretty,
and I suspect that the indefatigable Mr. A---- was (like all her
people) more attracted by her title than her charms. I regret very
much that I was present at the prologue to the happy state of
horse-whipping and black jobs, &c. &c.; but I could not foresee that
a man was to turn out mad, who had gone about the world for fifty
years, as competent to vote, and walk at large; nor did he seem to me
more insane than any other person going to be married.

"I have no objection to be acquainted with the Marquis Palavicini, if
he wishes it. Lately I have gone little into society, English or
foreign, for I had seen all that was worth seeing in the former
before I left England, and at the time of life when I was more
disposed to like it; and of the latter I had a sufficiency in the