possibilit la plus forte m'a priv du dernier plaisir que je pouvois avoir en Europe. Permettez moi, madame, de vous remercier encore une fois do toutes vos bonts, de vous demander un peu de part dans votre souvenir, et laissez moi vous dire que mes voeux se porteront dans tous les terns de ma vie vers vous, vers le capitaine, vers vos enfans. Vous allez avoir en Amrique un serviteur bien zl; je ne reviendrai pas en Europe sans arriver dans le Surrey: tout ce qui, pour mon esprit et pour mon coeur, a quelque valeur, est l .
Voulez-vous bien prsenter tous mes complimens au capitaine?(109)
(M. de Talleyrand to M. and Madame d'Arblay.) Londres, 2 Mars, 1794. Adieu, mon cher D'Arblay: je quitte votre pays jusqu'au moment o il n'appartiendra plus aux petites passions des hommes. Alors j'y reviendrai; non, en vrit, pour m'occuper d'affaires, car il y a long tems que je les ai abandonnes pour jamais; mais pour voir les excellens habitans du Surrey, J'espre savoir assez d'Anglais pour entendre Madame d'Arblay; d'ici quatre mois je ne vais faire autre chose que l'tudier: et pour apprendre le beau et bon langage, c'est "Evelina" et "Cecilia" qui sont mes livres d'tude et de plaisir. Je vous souhaite, mon cher ami, toute espce de bonheur, et vous tes on position de remplir tous mes souhaits.
je ne sais combien de tems je resterai en Amrique: s'il se rfroit quelque chose de raisonnable et de stable pour notre malheureux pays, je reviendrois; si l'Europe s'abme dans la campagne prochaine, je prparerai en Amrique des asyles tous nos amis.
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Adieu: mes hommages Madame d'Arblay et Madame phillips, je vous en prie: je vous demande et vous promets amiti pour la vie.(110)
M. D'ARBLAY's HORTICULTURAL PURSUITS.
(Madame d'Arblay to Doctor Burney.) Bookham, March 22, 1794. My dear father.—I am this Moment returned from reading your most welcome and kind letter at our Susanna's. The account of your better health gives me a pleasure beyond all words; and it is the more essential to my perfect contentment on account of your opinion of our retreat. I doubt not, my dearest father, but you judge completely right, and I may nearly say we are both equally disposed to pay the most implicit respect to your counsel. We give up, therefore, all thoughts of our London excursion for the present, and I shall write to that effect to our good intended hostess very speedily. I can easily conceive far more than you enlarge upon in this counsel: and, indeed, I have not myself been wholly free from apprehension of possible embarras, should we, at this period, visit London; for though M. d'Arblay not only could stand, but would court, all personal scrutiny, whether retrospective or actual, I see daily the extreme susceptibility which attends his very nice notions of honour, and how quickly and deeply his spirit is wounded by whatever he regards as injustice. Incapable, too, of the least trimming or
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disguise, he could not, at a time such as this, be in London without suffering or risking perhaps hourly, something unpleasant. Here we are tranquil, undisturbed and undisturbing. Can life, he often says, he more innocent than ours, or happiness more inoffensive? He works in his garden, or studies English and mathematics, while I write. When I work at my needle, he reads to me; and we enjoy the beautiful country around us in long and romantic strolls, during which he carries under his arm a portable garden chair, lent us by Mrs. Locke, that I may rest as I proceed. He is extremely fond, too, of writing, and makes, from time to time, memorandums of such memoirs, poems, and anecdotes as he recollects, and I wish to have preserved. These resources for sedentary life are certainly the first blessings that can be given to man, for they enable him to be happy in the extremest obscurity, even after tasting the dangerous draughts of glory and ambition.