I can only spare room for
a few short extracts:
"The contradictions one meets with every moment at Paris likewise
strike even a cursory observer,--a countess in a morning, her hair
dressed, with diamonds too perhaps, a dirty black handkerchief about
her neck, and a flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a
_femme publique_, dressed avowedly for the purposes of alluring the
men, with a not very small crucifix hanging at her bosom;--and the
Virgin Mary's sign at an ale-house door, with these words,
"'Je suis la mere de mon Dieu,
Et la gardienne de ce lieu.'"
"I have stolen a day to visit my old acquaintance the English Austin
Nuns at the Foffee, and found the whole community alive and cheerful;
they are many of them agreeable women, and having seen Dr. Johnson
with me when I was last abroad, inquired much for him: Mrs, Fermor,
the Prioress, niece to Belinda in the Rape of the Lock, taking
occasion to tell me, comically enough, 'that she believed there was
but little comfort to be found in a house that harboured _poets_; for
that she remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome
and conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten
servants to wait on him; and he gave one,' (said she) 'no amends by
his talk neither, for he only sate dozing all day, when the sweet
wine was out, and made his verses chiefly in the night; during which
season he kept himself awake by drinking coffee, which it was one of
the maids' business to make for him, and they took it by turns.
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