ought
proper not to say so. The French, as I said before, have good reason
to say that il n'est permis qu'aux medecins de mentir, and Delme
certainly justified the deception, if there was any; but he had at
last more fortitude or resolution as I hear than was expected. I
hope that Lady Betty will be reconciled to her change of life; there
must have been one inevitably, and, perhaps, that not less
disagreeable.

I am unhappy that I have not yet received any account of Caroline.
Mr. Woodhouse has returned my visit. I did not conceive it to be
proper that Mie Mie should wait upon Mrs. Bacon till an opportunity
had been offered of her being presented to her, but I shall be
desirous of bringing about that acquaintance. Mrs. Webb is now with
us, which is a piece of furniture here, not without its use, and
which I am in a habit of seeing with more satisfaction than perhaps
Mie Mie, who begins to think naturally a gouvernante to have a
mauvais air. I am not quite of that opinion dans les circonstances
actuelles.

No more news as yet from France. I expect to have a great deal of
discourse on Tuesday with St. Foy, on the subject of this
Revolution, which occupies my mind very much, although I have still
a great deal of information to acquire. It may be peu de chose, but,
as yet, I know no more than that the House of Bourbon, with the
noblesse francoise, their revenues and privileges, are in a manner
annihilated by a coup de main, as it were, and after an existence of
near a thousand years; and if you are now walking in the streets of
Paris, ever so quietly, but suspected or marked as one who will not
subscribe to this, you are immediately accroche a la Lanterne: tout
cela m'est inconcevable. But we are I am sure at the beginning only
of this Roman, instead of seeing the new Constitution so quietly
established by the first of September, as I have been confidently
assured that it will be.

Preparations were certainly making here for her Majesty the Queen of
France's(262) reception, and I am assured that if the King had not
gone as he did to the Hotel de Ville, the Duke of Orleans(263) would
immediately have been declared Regent. There seems some sort of
fatality in the scheme of forming (sic) a Regent, who, in neither of
the two kingdoms, is destine a ne pas arrive a bon part.

But one word more of Delme. I am told that if Lady Betty and Lady
J(ulia) live together, they will not have less than two thousand a
year to maintain