TO THE MISS BERRYS.

STRAWBERRY HILL, Tuesday evening, eight o’clock, Oct. 15, 1793.

Though I do not know when it will have its whole lading, I must begin my letter this very moment, to tell you what I have just heard.  I called on the Princesse d’Hennin, who has been in town a week.  I found her quite alone, and I thought she did not answer quite clearly about her two knights:  the Prince de Poix has taken a lodging in town, and she talks of letting her house here, if she can.  In short, I thought she had a little of an Ariadne-air ­but this was not what I was in such a hurry to tell you.  She showed me several pieces of letters, I think from the Duchesse de Bouillon:  one says, the poor Duchesse de Biron is again arrested and at the Jacobins, and with her “une jeune étourdie, qui ne fait que chanter toute la journée;” and who, think you, may that be? ­only our pretty little wicked Duchesse de Fleury! by her singing and not sobbing, I suppose she was weary of her Tircis, and is glad to be rid of him.  This new blow, I fear, will overset Madame de Biron again.  The rage at Paris seems to increase daily or hourly; they either despair, or are now avowed banditti.  I tremble so much for the great and most suffering victim of all, the Queen, that one cannot feel so much for many, as several perhaps deserve:  but her tortures have been of far longer duration than any martyrs, and more various; and her courage and patience equal to her woes!

My poor old friend, the Duchesse de la Valiere, past ninety and stone-deaf, has a guard set upon her, but in her own house; her daughter, the Duchesse de Chatillon, mother of the Duchesse de la Tremouille, is arrested; and thus the last, with her attachment to the Queen, must be miserable indeed! ­but one would think I feel for nothing but Duchesses:  the crisis has crowded them together into my letter, and into a prison; ­and to be a prisoner among cannibals is pitiable indeed!

Thursday morning, 17th, past ten.

I this moment receive the very comfortable twin-letter.  I am so conjugal, and so much in earnest upon the article of recovery, that I cannot think of a pretty thing to say to very pretty Mrs. Stanhope; nor do I know what would be a pretty thing in these days.  I might come out with some old-fashioned compliment, that would have been very genteel

    In good Queen Bess’s golden day, when I was a dame of honour.

Let Mrs. Stanhope imagine that I have said all she deserves:  I certainly think it, and will ratify it, when I have learnt the language of the nineteenth century; but I really am so ancient, that as Pythagoras imagined he had been Panthoides Euphorbus in the Trojan war, I am not sure that I did not ride upon a pillion behind a Gentleman-Usher, when her Majesty Elizabeth went into procession to St. Paul’s on the defeat of the Armada!  Adieu! the postman puts an end to my idle speculations ­but, Scarborough for ever! with three huzzas!

    Whole droves of minds are by the driving God
    Compell’d to drink the deep Lethaean flood,
    In large forgetful draughts to steep the cares
    Of their past labours, and their irksome years;
    That unremembering of its former pain
    The soul may suffer mortal flesh again.

(Aeneid, v.

Pythagoras, on the other hand, professes a distinct recollection of who he was and what he suffered in his former life.  He remembers that in the time of the Trojan war (at the outside not five hundred years before his time) he was a Trojan ­Euphorbus, the son of Panthous ­and that in the war he was killed by Menelaus; and his memory is so accurate, that not long before he had recognised the very shield which he had borne in the conflict hanging up as a trophy in the temple of Juno at Argos.]