not say kings, for they know not such language, but — friends
would know how to speak as you do to an oppressed and suf-
fering soul ! I read and reread daily a letter so fitted to
soothe my trouble ; I have read it to my friends who are,
like me, full of gratitude to your Majesty, and I say to
myself as I read it, and after reading it, " That great prince
is right," but I continue, nevertheless, to grieve. Your
Majesty must not be surprised or give up hope of my cure,
though I myself see none as yet. Objects of deep study
would be the only means of bringing it about ; your Majesty
suggests with as much kindness as wisdom that powerful
remedy ; but my poor brain is no longer capable of using it.
It is to time alone that I can look for some relief to my dis-
tress; and I fear that cruel time will destroy rather than
cure me.
The comparison that your Majesty makes between our un- happy individuality and the rivers which ever change though preservmg their names, is as ingenious as it is philosophical, and explains with as much reason as wit why time should console us ; but at present. Sire, my sad river feels only the pain of flowing, and sees no hope of a peaceful and happier current. If I were twenty-five years younger I might per- haps have the happiness of forming another attachment which would make life endurable to me; but. Sire, I am nearly sixty years of age, and at that time of life we cannot replace the friends we have the misfortune to lose. I feel this the more at this moment in an afflicting manner through a fresh loss with which I am threatened. ... An excellent woman, full of intelligence and virtue, . . . Mme. Geoffrin, who for thirty years has shown me the tenderest friendship, and who quite recently has given to my sorrow all the con- solations and distractions that her friendship could imagine, has been struck down with paralysis. ... I thus lose in the
