. Are you free of that of
St. Cloud? Are you often at Versailles? Insinuate and wriggle yourself
into favor at those places. L'Abbe de la Ville, my old friend, will help
you at the latter; your three ladies may establish you in the former. The
good-breeding 'de la ville et de la cour' [of the city and of the court]
are different; but without deciding which is intrinsically the best, that
of the court is, without doubt, the most necessary for you, who are to
live, to grow, and to rise in courts. In two years' time, which will be
as soon as you are fit for it, I hope to be able to plant you in the soil
of a YOUNG COURT here: where, if you have all the address, the suppleness
and versatility of a good courtier, you will have a great chance of
thriving and flourishing. Young favor is easily acquired if the proper
means are employed; and, when acquired, it is warm, if not durable; and
the warm moments must be snatched and improved. 'Quitte pour ce qui en
pent arriver apres'. Do not mention this view of mine for you to any one
mortal; but learn to keep your own secrets, which, by the way, very few
people can do.

If your course of experimental philosophy with Abbe Nolot is over, I
would have you apply to Abbe Sallier, for a master to give you a general
notion of astronomy and geometry; of both of which you may know as much,
as I desire you should, in six months' time. I only desire that you
should have a clear notion of the present planetary system, and the
history of all the former systems. Fontenelle's 'Pluralites des Mondes'
will almost teach you all you need know upon that subject. As for
geometry, the seven first books of Euclid will be a sufficient portion of
it for you. It is right to have a general notion of those abstruse
sciences, so as not to appear quite ignorant of them, when they happen,
as sometimes they do, to be the topics of conversation; but a deep
knowledge of them requires too much time, and engrosses the mind too
much. I repeat it again and again to you, Let the great book of the world
be your principal study. 'Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna'; which
may be rendered thus in English: Turn Over MEN BY DAY, AND WOMEN BY
NIGHT. I mean only the best editions.

Whatever may be said at Paris of my speech upon the bill for the
reformation of the present calendar, or whatever applause it may have met
with here, the whole, I can assure you, is owing to the words and to the
delivery, but by no means to the m