de la Valiere, past ninety and
stone-deaf, has a guard set upon her, but in her own house; her
daughter, the Duchesse de Chatillon, mother of the Duchesse de la
Tremouille, is arrested; and thus the last, with her attachment to the
Queen, must be miserable indeed!--but one would think I feel for nothing
but Duchesses: the crisis has crowded them together into my letter, and
into a prison;--and to be a prisoner among cannibals is pitiable indeed!

_Thursday morning, 17th, past ten._

I this moment receive the very comfortable twin-letter. I am so
conjugal, and so much in earnest upon the article of recovery, that I
cannot think of _a pretty thing_ to say to very pretty Mrs. Stanhope;
nor do I know what would be a pretty thing in these days. I might come
out with some old-fashioned compliment, that would have been very
genteel

In good Queen Bess's golden day, when I was a dame of honour.

Let Mrs. Stanhope imagine that I have said all she deserves: I certainly
think it, and will ratify it, when I have learnt the language of the
nineteenth century; but I really am so ancient, that as Pythagoras
imagined he had been Panthoides Euphorbus[1] in the Trojan war, I am
not sure that I did not ride upon a pillion behind a Gentleman-Usher,
when her Majesty Elizabeth went into procession to St. Paul's on the
defeat of the Armada! Adieu! the postman puts an end to my idle
speculations--but, Scarborough for ever! with three huzzas!

[Footnote 1: "_Euphorbus._" This is an allusion to the doctrine of
metempsychosis taught by the ancient philosopher Pythagoras of Samos,
according to which when a man died his soul remained in the shades below
suffering any punishment which the man had deserved, till after a
certain lapse of time all the taint of the former existence had been
worn away, when the soul returned to earth to animate some other body.
The passage referred to here by Walpole occurs in Ovid's
"Metamorphoses," xvi. 160, where Pythagoras is expounding his theory,
which is also explained to Aeneas by Anchises in the shades below
(Aeneid, vi. 745). But the two poets differ in more points than one.
According to Anchises, one thousand years are required between the two
existences; according to Pythagoras, not above four hundred or five
hundred. According to Anchises, before the soul revives in another body
it must have forgotten all that happened to it in the body of its former
owner. As Dryden translates Virgil--

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