Ses courtisans en pleurs, autour de lui rangés, etc.
J’enverrai dans peu la Henriade en Angleterre, pour la faire imprimer. Tout est achevé et réglé pour cet effet.
Dear sir, I take the liberty to send you my old follies, having no new things to présent you with. I am now at Bruxelles with the same lady, Mme du Châtelet, who hindered me, some years ago, from paying you a visit at Constantinople, and whom I shall live with in all probability the greatest part of my life, since for thèse ten years I have not departed from her. She is now at the trouble of a damn’d suit in law, that she persues at Bruxelles. We have abandoned the most agreeable retirement in the country, to bawl here in tbe grotto of the flemish chicane.
The high dutch baron who takes upon himself to présent you with this packet of french reveries, is one of the noble players whom the emperor sends into Turky to represent the majesty of the Roman empire before the Highness of the Musulman power.
I am persuaded you are become, now a days, a perfect Turk ; you speak no doubt their language very well, and you keep, to be sure, a pretty harem. Yet I am afraid you want two provisions or ingrédients which I think necessary to make that nauseous draught of life go down, I mean books and friends. Should you be happy enough to have met at Pera with men whose conversation agrees with your way of thinking ? If so, you want for nothing ; for you enjoy health, honours and fortune. Health and places I have not : I regret the former, I am satisfied without the other. As to fortune, I enjoy a very competent one, and I have a friend besides. Thus I reckon myself happy, though I am sickly as you saw me at Wandsworth.
I hope I shall return to Paris with Mme du Châtelet in two years time. If, about that season, you return to dear England by the way of Paris, I hope I shall have the pleasure to see your dear Excellency at her house, which is without doubt one of the finest at Paris, and situated in a position worthy of Constanti-
