amid blockheads, will
manage them; and suddenly exclaims: "O my queen, what curious animals
men and women are! I laugh at their manoeuvres, the days when I have
slept well; if I have missed sleep, I could kill them. These changes of
temper prove that I do not break off kind. Let us mock other people, and
let other people mock us; it is well done on both sides.--[Poor
little De Staal: to what a posture have things come with you, in that
fast-rotting Epoch, of Hypocrisies becoming all insolvent!]

"WEDNESDAY, 16th. Our Ghosts do not show themselves by daylight. They
appeared yesterday at ten in the evening; I do not think we shall see
them sooner to-day: the one is engaged in writing high feats [SIECLE DE
LOUIS XV., or what at last became such]; the other in commenting Newton.
They will neither play nor walk: they are, in fact, equivalent to
ZEROS in a society where their learned writings are of no
significance.--[Pauses, without notice given: for some hours, perhaps
days; then resuming:] Nay, worse still: their apparition to-night has
produced a vehement declamation on one of our little social diversions
here, the game of CAVAGNOLE: ["Kind of BIRIBI," it would appear; in the
height of fashion then.] it was continued and maintained," on the part
of Madame du Chatelet, you guess, "in a tone which is altogether unheard
of in this place; and was endured," on the part of Serene Highness,
"with a moderation not less surprising. But what is unendurable is my
babble"--And herewith our nimble little woman hops off again into the
general field of things; and gossips largely, How are you, my queen,
Whither are you going, Whither we; That the Maillebois people are
away, and also the Villeneuves, if anybody knew them now; then how
the Estillacs, to the number of four, are coming to-morrow; and Cousin
Soquence, for all his hunting, can catch nothing; and it is a continual
coming and going; and how Boursoufle is to be played, and a Dame Dufour
is just come, who will do a character. Rubrics, vanished Shadows, nearly
all those high Dames and Gentlemen; LA PAUVRE Saint-Pierre, "eaten with
gout," who is she? "Still drags herself about, as well as she can;
but not with me, for I never go by land, and she seems to have the
hydrophobia, when I take to the water. [Thread of date is gone! I almost
think we must have got to Saturday by this time:--or perhaps it is only
Thursday, and Maillebois off prematurely, to be out of the way of
the Farce?