your time here is to be long or
short, I think you ought to pass it agreeably, and to that end you must
engage in a little affair of the heart.--My heart (answered I gravely
enough) does not engage very easily, and I have no design of parting
with it. I see, madam, (said he sighing,) by the ill nature of that
answer, that I am not to hope for it, which is a great mortification to
me that am charmed with you. But, however, I am still devoted to your
service; and since I am not worthy of entertaining you myself, do me the
honour of letting me know whom you like best among us, and I'll engage
to manage the affair entirely to your satisfaction.--You may judge in
what manner I should have received this compliment in my own country,
but I was well enough acquainted with the way of this, to know that he
really intended me an obligation, and thanked him with a grave
courtesy for his zeal to serve me, and only assured him that I had no
occasion to make use of it.

"Thus you see, my dear, gallantry and good-breeding are as different, in
different climates, as morality and religion. Who have the rightest
notions of both, we shall never know till the day of judgment, for which
great day of _eclaircissement_, I own there is very little impatience in
your, &c."

Love-making was indeed one of the principal pastimes at Vienna. There
was Count Tarrocco (who was in attendance on the Prince of Portugal),
and, as she told Lady Mar, "just such a Roman Catholic as you." "He
succeeds greatly with the devout beauties here," she went on to say;
"his first overtures in gallantry are disguised under the luscious
strains of spiritual love, that were sung formerly by the sublimely
voluptuous Fenelon and the tender Madam Guion, who turned the spirit of
carnal love to divine objects; thus the Count begins with the spirit and
ends generally with the flesh, when he makes his addresses to holy
virgins." Presently, she teased her sister about this same young man.
"Count Tarrocco is just come in," she wrote. "He is the only person I
have excepted in my general order to receive no company--I think I see
you smile--but I am not so far gone as to stand in need of absolution;
though as my heart is deceitful, and the Count very agreeable, you may
think that even though I should not want an absolution, I would
nevertheless be glad to have an indulgence.--No such thing. However, as
I am a heretic, and you no confessor, I shall make no more declarations
on th