ir women, you know, Lucy, are always
insipid; she is the taste of no man breathing, though eternally making
advances to every man; without spirit, fire, understanding, vivacity,
or any quality capable of making amends for the mediocrity of her
charms.

Her insolence in attempting to attach Fitzgerald is intolerable,
especially when the whole province knows him to be my lover: there is
no expressing to what a degree I hate her.

The next time we meet I hope to return her impertinence on Thursday
night at the governor's; I will never forgive Fitzgerald if he takes
the least notice of her.

Emily has read my letter; and says she did not think I had so much
of the woman in me; insists on my being civil to Madame La Brosse, but
if I am, Lucy--

These Frenchwomen are not to be supported; they fancy vanity and
assurance are to make up for the want of every other virtue; forgetting
that delicacy, softness, sensibility, tenderness, are attractions to
which they are strangers: some of them here are however tolerably
handsome, and have a degree of liveliness which makes them not quite
insupportable.

You will call all this spite, as Emily does, so I will say no more:
only that, in order to shew her how very easy it is to be civil to a
rival, I wish for the pleasure of seeing another French lady, that I
could mention, at Quebec.

Good night, my dear! tell Temple, I am every thing but in love with
him.

Your faithful,
A. Fermor.

I will however own, I encouraged Fitzgerald by a kind look. I was
so pleased at his return, that I could not keep up the farce of disdain
I had projected: in love affairs, I am afraid, we are all fools alike.

LETTER 106.

To Miss Fermor.

Saturday noon.

Come to my dressing-room, my dear; I have a thousand things to say
to you: I want to talk of my Rivers, to tell you all the weakness of my
soul.

No, my dear, I cannot love him more, a passion like mine will not
admit addition; from the first moment I saw him my whole soul was his:
I knew not that I was dear to him; but true genuine love is
self-existent, and does not depend on being beloved: I should have
loved him even had he been attached to another.

This declaration has made me the happiest of my sex; but it has not
increased, it could not increase, my tenderness: with what softness,
what diffidence, what respect, what delicacy, was this declaration
made! my dear friend, he is a god, and my ardent affection