nse.

How go, your pleasures at Rome? Are you in fashion there? that is, do you
live with the people who are?--the only way of being so yourself, in
time. Are you domestic enough in any considerable house to be called 'le
petit Stanhope'? Has any woman of fashion and good-breeding taken the
trouble of abusing and laughing at you amicably to your face? Have you
found a good 'decrotteuse'. For those are the steps by which you must
rise to politeness. I do not presume to ask if you have any attachment,
because I believe you will not make me your confident; but this I will
say, eventually, that if you have one, 'il faut bien payer d'attentions
et de petits soin', if you would have your sacrifice propitiously
received. Women are not so much taken by beauty as men are, but prefer
those men who show them the most attention.

Would you engage the lovely fair?
With gentlest manners treat her;
With tender looks and graceful air,
In softest accents greet her.

Verse were but vain, the Muses fail,
Without the Graces' aid;
The God of Verse could not prevail
To stop the flying maid.

Attention by attentions gain,
And merit care by cares;
So shall the nymph reward your pain;
And Venus crown your prayers.
Probatum est.

A man's address and manner weigh much more with them than his beauty;
and, without them, the Abbati and Monsignori will get the better of you.
This address and manner should be exceedingly respectful, but at the same
time easy and unembarrassed. Your chit-chat or 'entregent' with them
neither can, nor ought to be very solid; but you should take care to turn
and dress up your trifles prettily, and make them every now and then
convey indirectly some little piece of flattery. A fan, a riband, or a
head-dress, are great materials for gallant dissertations, to one who has
got 'le ton leger et aimable de la bonne compagnie'. At all events, a man
had better talk too much to women, than too little; they take silence for
dullness, unless where they think that the passion they have inspired
occasions it; and in that case they adopt the notion that

Silence in love betrays more woe
Than words, though ne'er so witty;
The beggar that is dumb, we know,
Deserves a double pity.

'A propos' of this subject: what progress do you make in that language,
in which Charles th