Diary of the times of Charles II/Volume 1/Mr. Savile to Mr. Sidney, September 11
MR. SAVILE TO MR. SIDNEY.
This is rather to tell you, I shall not write to you by the next post, than for anything I have to say to you by this, my last haying told you the method of the Queen of Spain's affairs which yet holds, and to-morrow she returns to Fontainbleau, and so does your humble servant; Madame de Mecklenbourg says she heard my Lord Sidney had arrived in Holland; she past near it, and would fain have seen him, had she not have been joined with the Duchess of Osnaburg, who could not be persuaded to pass that way. On Thursday the Duke of Pastrana makes his entry at Fontainbleau; he has three coaches, of which two are so fine that they are supposed to be for his master; I wish you saw him that you might know a person that at Madrid is called the terror of husbands, being there what the Earl of Mulgrave would willingly be thought in London.[1] James Porter has resigned his Embassy to Mr. Tufton, by reason of some politic reflections out of England as I am informed from some Catholics here, who are scandalized at the change. Poor old Ruvigny is so ill that his life is very much doubted, his son has also a quartern ague. The news of our master's illness has so frighted me that I expect this day's letters with great impatience, as well as with fear and trembling. Good God, what a change would such an accident make! the very thought of it frights me out of my wits. God bless you, and deliver us all from that damnable curse! The printed narrative I mentioned in my last will not be published till to-morrow.
- ↑ In the memoir of this nobleman, appended to his works, we have some insight into this feature of his character, for which happily he expressed, some years before he died, a good deal of concern. His biographer, who treats the subject with the levity of the age, attributes his libertinism "to an impetuosity of temper too much neglected in his education, together with the prevailing fashion of the court in which he lived."