ns. B--. He is a handsome young fellow, about twenty-five
years of age, and keeps house with two maiden sisters, who are
professed devotees. The brother is a little libertine, good natured and
obliging; but a true Frenchman in vanity, which is undoubtedly the
ruling passion of this volatile people. He has an inconsiderable place
under the government, in consequence of which he is permitted to wear a
sword, a privilege which he does not fail to use. He is likewise
receiver of the tythes of the clergy in this district, an office that
gives him a command of money, and he, moreover, deals in the wine
trade. When I came to his house, he made a parade of all these
advantages: he displayed his bags of money, and some old gold which his
father had left him. He described his chateau in the country; dropped
hints of the fortunes that were settled upon mademoiselles his sisters;
boasted of his connexions at court; and assured me it was not for my
money that he let his lodgings, but altogether with a view to enjoy the
pleasure of my company. The truth, when stript of all embellishments,
is this: the sieur B-- is the son of an honest bourgeois lately dead,
who left him the house, with some stock in trade, a little money, and a
paltry farm: his sisters have about three thousand livres (not quite
140 L) apiece; the brother's places are worth about fifty pounds a
year, and his connexions at court are confined to a commis or clerk in
the secretary's office, with whom he corresponds by virtue of his
employment. My landlord piques himself upon his gallantry and success
with the fair-sex: he keeps a fille de joye, and makes no secret of his
amours. He told miss C-- the other day, in broken English, that, in the
course of the last year, he had made six bastards. He owned, at the
same time, he had sent them all to the hospital; but, now his father is
dead, he would himself take care of his future productions. This,
however, was no better than a gasconade. Yesterday the house was in a
hot alarm, on account of a new windfall of this kind: the sisters were
in tears; the brother was visited by the cure of the parish; the lady
in the straw (a sempstress) sent him the bantling in a basket, and he
transmitted it by the carriers to the Enfans trouves at Paris.

But to return from this digression: Mr. B-- advised me to send a
requete or petition to the chancellor of France, that I might obtain an
order to have my books examined on the spot, by the pre