ind this declaration.' I have just dictated to him the
above tender words; for our Envoy, I need not tell you, is not strong at
writing or thinking.

"The fair Catherine, I must tell you, is no less than a carpenter's
wife, a well-to-do bourgeois, living at the Tyburn, or Gallows Road.
She found out her ancient lover very soon after our arrival, and hath a
marvellous hankering to be a Count's lady. A pretty little creature is
this Madam Catherine. Billets, breakfasts, pretty walks, presents of
silks and satins, pass daily between the pair; but, strange to say,
the lady is as virtuous as Diana, and hath resisted all my Count's
cajoleries hitherto. The poor fellow told me, with tears in his eyes,
that he believed he should have carried her by storm on the very first
night of their meeting, but that her son stepped into the way; and he or
somebody else hath been in the way ever since. Madam will never appear
alone. I believe it is this wondrous chastity of the lady that has
elicited this wondrous constancy of the gentleman. She is holding out
for a settlement; who knows if not for a marriage? Her husband, she
says, is ailing; her lover is fool enough, and she herself conducts
her negotiations, as I must honestly own, with a pretty notion of
diplomacy."

*****

This is the only part of the reverend gentleman's letter that directly
affects this history. The rest contains some scandal concerning greater
personages about the Court, a great share of abuse of the Elector
of Hanover, and a pretty description of a boxing-match at Mr. Figg's
amphitheatre in Oxford Road, where John Wells, of Edmund Bury (as by the
papers may be seen), master of the noble science of self-defence, did
engage with Edward Sutton, of Gravesend, master of the said science; and
the issue of the combat.

"N. B."--adds the Father, in a postscript--"Monsieur Figue gives a
hat to be cudgelled for before the Master mount; and the whole of
this fashionable information hath been given me by Monseigneur's son,
Monsieur Billings, garcon-tailleur, Chevalier de Galgenstein."

Mr. Billings was, in fact, a frequent visitor at the Ambassador's house;
to whose presence he, by a general order, was always admitted. As for
the connection between Mrs. Catherine and her former admirer, the
Abbe's history of it is perfectly correct; nor can it be said that this
wretched woman, whose tale now begins to wear a darker hue, was, in
anything but SOUL, fait