practical lesson of morality within the reach of the present age, is that
of the cup-and-ball.

At Chambery they did not give us the trouble of studying expedients to
avoid weariness, when by ourselves, for a troop of important visitors
gave us too much by their company, to feel any when alone. The annoyance
they formerly gave me had not diminished; all the difference was, that I
now found less opportunity to abandon myself to my dissatisfaction.
Poor Madam de Warrens had not lost her old predilection for schemes and
systems; on the contrary, the more she felt the pressure of her domestic
necessities, the more she endeavored to extricate herself from them by
visionary projects; and, in proportion to the decrease of her present
resources, she contrived to enlarge, in idea, those of the future.
Increase of years only strengthened this folly: as she lost her relish
for the pleasures of the world and youth, she replaced it by an
additional fondness for secrets and projects; her house was never clear
of quacks, contrivers of new manufactures, alchemists, projects of all
kinds and of all descriptions, whose discourses began by a distribution
of millions and concluded by giving you to understand that they were in
want of a crown--piece. No one went from her empty-handed; and what
astonished me most was, how she could so long support such profusion,
without exhausting the source or wearying her creditors.

Her principal project at the time I am now speaking of was that of
establishing a Royal Physical Garden at Chambery, with a Demonstrator
attached to it; it will be unnecessary to add for whom this office was
designed. The situation of this city, in the midst of the Alps, was
extremely favorable to botany, and as Madam de Warrens was always for
helping out one project with another, a College of Pharmacy was to be
added, which really would have been a very useful foundation in so poor a
country, where apothecaries are almost the only medical practitioners.
The retreat of the chief physician, Grossi, to Chambery, on the demise of
King Victor, seemed to favor this idea, or perhaps, first suggest it;
however this may be, by flattery and attention she set about managing
Grossi, who, in fact, was not very manageable, being the most caustic and
brutal, for a man who had any pretensions to the quality of a gentleman,
that ever I knew. The reader may judge for himself by two or three
traits of character, which I shall add by way