and faithful

"N. B.

"P.S. There is a rumour in letters of some disturbance or complot in
the French Pyrenean army--generals suspected or dismissed, and
ministers of war travelling to see what's the matter. 'Marry (as
David says), this hath an angry favour.'

"Tell Count ---- that some of the names are not quite intelligible,
especially of the clubs; he speaks of _Watts_--perhaps he is right,
but in my time _Watiers_ was the Dandy Club, of which (though no
dandy) I was a member, at the time too of its greatest glory, when
Brummell and Mildmay, Alvanley and Pierrepoint, gave the Dandy Balls;
and we (the club, that is,) got up the famous masquerade at
Burlington House and Garden, for Wellington. He does not speak of the
_Alfred_, which was the most _recherche_ and most tiresome of any, as
I know by being a member of that too."

LETTER 513. TO THE EARL OF B----.

"April 6. 1823.

"It _would_ be worse than idle, knowing, as I do, the utter
worthlessness of words on such occasions, in me to attempt to express
what I ought to feel, and do feel for the loss you have sustained[1];
and I must thus dismiss the subject, for I dare not trust myself
further with it _for your_ sake, or for my own. I shall _endeavour_
to see you as soon as it may not appear intrusive. Pray excuse the
levity of my yesterday's scrawl--I little thought under what
circumstances it would find you.

[Footnote 1: The death of Lord B----'s son, which had been long
expected, but of which the account had just then arrived.]

"I have received a very handsome and flattering note from Count ----.
He must excuse my apparent rudeness and real ignorance in replying to
it in English, through the medium of your kind interpretation. I
would not on any account deprive him of a production, of which I
really think more than I have even _said_, though you are good enough
not to be dissatisfied even with that; but whenever it is completed,
it would give me the greatest pleasure to have a _copy_--but _how_ to
keep it secret? literary secrets are like others. By changing the
names, or at least omitting several, and altering the circumstances
indicative of the writer's real station or situation, the author
would render it a most amusing publication. His countrymen have not
been treated, either in a literary or personal point of view, with
such deference in English recent works, as to lay him under any very
great national obligation of forbearance; and really the