English nuns, and I talked with her through the grate, and
I am very kindly used by the English Benedictine friars."

A striking instance of Johnson's occasional impracticability occurred
during this journey:

"When we were at Rouen together," says Mrs. Thrale, "he took a great
fancy to the Abbe Kofiette, with whom he conversed about the
destruction of the order of Jesuits, and condemned it loudly, as a
blow to the general power of the church, and likely to be followed
with many and dangerous innovations, which might at length become
fatal to religion itself, and shake even the foundation of
Christianity. The gentleman seemed to wonder and delight in his
conversation: the talk was all in Latin, which both spoke fluently,
and Mr. Johnson pronounced a long eulogium upon Milton with so much
ardour, eloquence, and ingenuity, that the abbe rose from his seat
and embraced him. My husband seeing them apparently so charmed with
the company of each other, politely invited the abbe to England,
intending to oblige his friend; who, instead of thanking, reprimanded
him severely before the man, for such a sudden burst of tenderness
towards a person he could know nothing at all of; and thus put a
sudden finish to all his own and Mr. Thrale's entertainment from the
company of the Abbe Roffette."

In a letter dated May 9, 1780, also, Mrs. Thrale alludes to more than
one disagreement in France:

"When did I ever plague you about contour, and grace, and expression?
I have dreaded them all three since that hapless day at Compiegne,
when you teased me so, and Mr. Thrale made what I hoped would have
proved a lasting peace; but French ground is unfavourable to fidelity
perhaps, and so now you begin again: after having taken five years'
breath, you might have done more than this. Say another word, and I
will bring up afresh the history of your exploits at St. Denys and
how cross you were for nothing--but some how or other, our travels
never make any part either of our conversation or correspondence."

Joseph Baretti, who now formed one of the family, is so mixed up with
their history that some account of him becomes indispensable. He was
a Piedmontese, whose position in his native country was not of a kind
to tempt him to remain in it, when Lord Charlemont, to whom he had
been useful in Italy, proposed his coming to England. His own story
was that he had lost at play the little property he had inherited
from his father, an architect. The