see your country, yourself, and your toilette.

_Mad. de. P._--Ah, madam, do me the honour of seating yourself. An
arm-chair for the Lady Tullia.

_Tullia._--For whom? me, madam? and am I to sit on that little
incommodious sort of throne, so that my legs must hang down and become
quite red?

_Mad. de P._--Upon what then would you sit?

_Tullia._--Madam, upon a couch.

_Mad. de P._--Ay, I understand--you would say upon a sofa; there
stands one, upon which you may recline at your ease.

_Tullia._--I am charmed to see that the French have furniture as
convenient as ours.

_Mad. de P._--Hah, hah, madam, you've no stockings! your legs are
naked, but ornamented, however, with a very pretty ribbon, after the
fashion of a sandal.

_Tullia._--We knew nothing about stockings, which, as a useful and
agreeable invention, I certainly prefer to our sandals.

_Mad. da P._--Good heavens, madam, I believe you've no _chemise!_

_Tullia._--No, madam, in my time nobody wore one.

_Mad. de P._--And in what time did you live?

_Tullia._--In the time of Sylla, Pompey, Caesar, Cato, Cataline; and
Cicero, to whom I have the honour of being daughter: of that Cicero, of
whom one of your _proteges_ has made mention in barbarous verse.[3] I
went yesterday to the theatre, where Cataline was represented with all
the celebrated people of my time, but I did not recognise one of them;
and when my father exhorted me to make advances to Cataline, I was
astonished! But, madam, you seem to have some beautiful mirrors; your
chamber is full of them; our mirrors were not a sixteenth part so large
as yours; are they of steel?

_Mad. de P._--No, madam, they are made with sand, and nothing is more
common amongst us.

_Tullia._--What an admirable art! I confess we had none such! And oh!
what a beautiful painting too you have there!

_Mad. de P._--It is not a painting, but a print, done merely with
lamp-black; a hundred copies of the same design may be struck off in a
day, and this secret immortalizes pictures, which time would otherwise
destroy.

_Tullia._--It is indeed an astonishing secret! we Romans had nothing
like it!

_Un Savant._--(A literary man there present, taking up the discourse,
and producing a book from his pocket, says to Tullia:) You will be
astonished, madam, to learn, that this book is not written by hand, but
that it is printed almost in a manner similar to engravings; and that
this invention also immortalizes works of t