Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/142

1774] the piquancy nor the merit from your "Eulogy of Catinat;" as soon as it appears I will send it to you.

I have seen a great deal of Mme. de Boufflers since your departure, and I shall either humble or exalt your vanity by telling you that she never once named you. If that is natural, it is very cold; if there is a plan, it is very warm. We spent an evening with her, we went to the fair together, she came to see me, and we are all going to the catafalque. But for my benefit alone are some ezcellent pine-apples which she has sent me, and a letter of four pages on public affairs, on the glory with which the Prince de Conti has covered himself, and on her step-daughter, — not to speak of very flattering praises for me. I shall make you die of jealousy some day when I read it to you ; but before then you will coquet and please and fascinate so many that my successes will seem nothing. But, mon ami, why did you not write me from Chanteloup? have you already nothing to say to me? The post leaves every day, and if it did not, what matter ? the letter would be in the post, and you need not be a century deprived of the pleasure of talking with one who loves you : remark that I dare not say "one whom you love." If you arrive Tuesday after the courier from Bordeaux, I shall have to wait till Wednesday, and that is holding me in purgatory after keeping me for fifteen days in hell.

If you receive this letter in Bordeaux, as I do not doubt you will, I retract and will ask you to go and see that consul : perhaps I shall thus obtain more details. He will tell you of the most lovable, most interesting of beings, whom I ought to have loved solely, whom I should never have injured if, by a fatality I detest, I had not been unable to escape a