Eleven at night.
I am just come from the general’s assembly; where, I should have told you, I was this day fortnight announced Madame Fitzgerald, to the great mortification of two or three cats, who had very sagaciously determined, that Fitzgerald had too much understanding ever to think of such a flirting, coquetish creature as a wife.
I was grave at the assembly to-night, in spite of all the pains I took to be otherwise: I was hurt at the idea it would probably be the last at which I should be; I felt a kind of concern at parting, not only with the few I loved, but with those who had till to-night been indifferent to me.
There is something affecting in the idea of the last time of seeing even those persons or places, for which we have no particular affection.
I go to-morrow to take leave of the nuns, at the Ursuline convent; I suppose I shall carry this melancholy idea with me there, and be hurt at seeing them too for the last time.
I pay visits every day amongst the peasants, who are very fond of me. I talk to them of their farms, give money to their children, and teach their wives to be good huswives: I am the idol of the country people five miles round, who declare me the most amiable, most generous woman in the world, and think it a thousand pities I should be damned.
Adieu! say every thing for me to my sweet friends, if arrived.
7th, Eleven o’clock.
I have this moment a large packet of letters for Emily from Mrs. Melmoth, which I intend to take the care of myself, as I hope to be in England almost as soon as this.
Good morrow!
Yours ever, &c.
A. Fitzgerald.