more than a week after it was written, and replied at once.
Madame de Montmirail to Lady Hamilton.
"It rejoiced me so much to hear from you, my dear child. I was getting anxious about your health, your spirits, a thousand things that I think of continually; for my darling Cerise is never out of my mind. What you say of your society amuses me, and I can well imagine my shy girl feeling lost amongst an assemblage of awkward gentlemen and stupid ladies, far more than in a court ball at the Palais Royal, or a reception at Marly as it used to be; alas! as it will be no more. When you are as old as I am—for I am getting very old now, as you would say if you could see me closeted every morning over my accounts with my intendant—when you are as old as I am, you will have learned that there is very little difference between one society and another, so long as people are of a certain class, of course, and do not eat with their knives. Manner is but a trick, easily acquired if we begin young, but impossible to learn after thirty. Real politeness, which is a different thing altogether, is but good nature in its best clothes, and consists chiefly in the faculty of putting oneself in another person's place, and the wish to do as one would be done by. I have often seen people with very bad manners exceedingly polite. I have also even oftener seen the reverse. If you do not suffer yourself to find these English tedious, you will extract from them plenty of amusement; and the talent of being easily entertained is one to be cultivated to the utmost.
"Even in Paris, they tell me to-day, such a talent would be most enviable; for all complain of the dulness pervading society, and the oppressive influence of the Court. I cannot speak from my own observation, for I have been careful to go nowhere while in the capital, and to retire to my estates here in Touraine as quickly as possible. I have not even seen the Prince-Marshal, nor do I feel that my spirits would be good enough to endure his importunate kindness. I hear, moreover, that he devotes himself now to Mademoiselle de Villeroy, the old Marshal's youngest daughter; so you will excuse me of pique rather than ingratitude.
