ur business will quicken your pleasures; but still your time must,
at least, be divided: whereas now it is wholly your own, and cannot be so
well employed as in the pleasures of a gentleman. The world is now the
only book you want, and almost the only one you ought to read: that
necessary book can only be read in company, in public places, at meals,
and in 'ruelles'. You must be in the pleasures, in order to learn the
manners of good company. In premeditated, or in formal business, people
conceal, or at least endeavor to conceal, their characters: whereas
pleasures discover them, and the heart breaks out through the guard of
the understanding. Those are often propitious moments for skillful
negotiators to improve. In your destination particularly, the able
conduct of pleasures is of infinite use; to keep a good table, and to do
the honors of it gracefully, and 'sur le ton de la bonne compagnie', is
absolutely necessary for a foreign minister. There is a certain light
table chit-chat, useful to keep off improper and too serious subjects,
which is only to be learned in the pleasures of good company. In truth it
may be trifling; but, trifling as it is, a man of parts and experience of
the world will give an agreeable turn to it. 'L'art de badiner
agreablement' is by no means to be despised.

An engaging address, and turn to gallantry, is often of very great
service to foreign ministers. Women have, directly or indirectly; a good
deal to say in most courts. The late Lord Strafford governed, for a
considerable time, the Court of Berlin and made his own fortune, by being
well with Madame de Wartenberg, the first King of Prussia's mistress. I
could name many other instances of that kind. That sort of agreeable
'caquet de femmes', the necessary fore-runners of closer conferences, is
only to be got by frequenting women of the first fashion, 'et, qui
donnent le ton'. Let every other book then give way to this great and
necessary book, the world, of which there are so many various readings,
that it requires a great deal of time and attention to under stand it
well: contrary to all other books, you must not stay home, but go abroad
to read it; and when you seek it abroad, you will not find it in
booksellers' shops and stalls, but in courts, in hotels, at
entertainments, balls, assemblies, spectacles, etc. Put yourself upon the
footing of an easy, domestic, but polite familiarity and intimacy in the
several French houses to which you