Monsieur P-, the farmer-general, was just as inquisitive about our
taxes. They were very considerable, he heard. - If we knew but how
to collect them, said I, making him a low bow.
I could never have been invited to Mons. P-'s concerts upon any
other terms.
I had been misrepresented to Madame de Q- as an esprit. - Madame de
Q- was an esprit herself: she burnt with impatience to see me, and
hear me talk. I had not taken my seat, before I saw she did not
care a sous whether I had any wit or no; - I was let in, to be
convinced she had. I call heaven to witness I never once opened
the door of my lips.
Madame de V- vow'd to every creature she met - "She had never had a
more improving conversation with a man in her life."
There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman. - She is
coquette, - then deist, - then devote: the empire during these is
never lost, - she only changes her subjects when thirty-five years
and more have unpeopled her dominion of the slaves of love, she re-
peoples it with slaves of infidelity, - and then with the slaves of
the church.
Madame de V- was vibrating betwixt the first of those epochas: the
colour of the rose was fading fast away; - she ought to have been a
deist five years before the time I had the honour to pay my first
visit.
