the royal coffers with gold, it will be gold well
employed. The King, who means so well, should be encouraged to repeat
these Assemblies. You see how we republicans are apt to preach, when we
get on politics. Adieu, my dear friend. Yours affectionately.

TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE.

NISMES, March 20, 1787.

Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarree, like a
lover at his mistress. The stocking weavers and silk spinners around it
consider me a hypochondriac Englishman, about to write with a pistol
the last chapter of his history. This is the second time I have been in
love since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de
Laye-Epinaye in Beaujolois, a delicious morsel of sculpture, by M. A.
Slodtz. This, you will say, was in rule, to fall in love with a female
beauty; but with a house! it is out of all precedent. No, Madam, it is
not without a precedent in my own history. While in Paris, I was
violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm, and used to go to the
Tuileries almost daily, to look at it. The _loueuse des chaises_,
inattentive to my passion, never had the complaisance to place a chair
there, so that, sitting on the parapet, and twisting my neck round to
see the object of my admiration, I generally left it with a
_torti-colli_.

From Lyons to Nismes I have been nourished with the remains of Roman
grandeur. They have always brought you to my mind, because I know your
affection for whatever is Roman and noble. At Vienna I thought of you.
But I am glad you were not there; for you would have seen me more angry
than, I hope, you will ever see me. The Praetorian Palace, as it is
called, comparable, for its fine proportions, to the Maison Quarree,
defaced by the barbarians who have converted it to its present purpose,
its beautiful fluted Corinthian columns cut out, in part, to make space
for Gothic windows, and hewed down, in the residue, to the plane of the
building, was enough, you must admit, to disturb my composure. At
Orange, too, I thought of you. I was sure you had seen with pleasure
the sublime triumphal arch of Marius at the entrance of the city. I
went then to the Arenae. Would you believe, Madam, that in this
eighteenth century, in France, under the reign of Louis XVI., they are
at this moment pulling down the circular wall of this superb remain, to
pave a road? And that, too, from a hill which is itself an entire mass
of stone, just as fit, and more accessible? A