instance of the vanity of human wishes. But this embarrassment proceeds chiefly from my own fault, and from a vain anxiety to give no offence nor displeasure to any body.
The men of letters here are really very agreeable: all of them men of the world, living in entire, or almost entire harmony among themselves, and quite irreproachable in their morals. It would give you, and Jardine, and Robertson, great satisfaction to find that there is not a single deist among them. Those whose persons and conversation I like best, are D'Alembert, Buffon, Marmontel, Diderot, Duclos, Helvetius, and old President Henault, who, though now decaying, retains that amiable character which made him once the delight of all France. He had always the best cook and the best company in Paris. But though I know you will laugh at me, as they do, I must confess that I am more carried away from their society than I should be, by the great ladies, with whom I became acquainted at my first introduction to court, and whom my connexions with the English ambassador will not allow me entirely to drop.
Nothing can be more easy and agreeable than my situation with Lord Hertford, who is a man of strict honour, an amiable temper, a good understanding, and an elegant person and behaviour. He takes very much in this place. He has got an opinion very well founded, that the more acquaintance I make, and the greater intimacies I form with the French, the more I am enabled to be of service to him: so he exacts no attendance from me; and is well pleased to find me carried into all kinds of company. He tells me, that if he did not meet me by chance in third places, we should go out of acquaintance. Thus you see my present plan of life sketched out; but it is unsuitable to my age and temper; and I am determined to retrench and to abandon the fine folks, before they abandon me.[181:1]
During his absence, Hume's house was let to Blair. In this letter he gives pretty minute instructions as to the most advantageous distribution of the occupation of the apartments, which incidentally illustrate his own domestic habits. Thus—
Never put a fire in the south room with the red paper. It is so warm of itself, that all last winter, which was a very severe one, I lay with a single blanket; and frequently upon coming in at midnight, starving with cold, have sat down and read for an hour, as if I had had a stove in the room.
You think it inconvenient to take the house only for an interval. Alas! my prospects of being home are very distant and very uncertain: I am afraid I might say worse. My connexions with Lord Hertford must probably last for some years; after which, I shall be rich enough to live in Paris or London as I please, or to retire to a provincial town in France, or to Bath, or God knows whither. I like to keep my house in case of accidents, and therefore neither choose to sell it, nor let a lease of it; but there is no great chance of your being disturbed in it for some time. I am, &c.
P.S.—Pray, do you not all pay court to the Lord Marischal?[182:1] Do you imagine that you ever saw so excellent a man? or that you have any chance for seeing his equal if he were gone?
Hume to Colonel Edmondstoune.
Paris, 9th January, 1764.
Dear Edmondstoune,—I was fully settled, and, as I thought, for life at Edinburgh; had bought a very pretty little house, which I had repaired and furnished to my fancy; had purchased a chaise, and fixed every thing about my family on such a footing as to continue there the rest of my days. But while I was in this situation, which was far from disagreeable, I received a letter from my friend Mr. Wood, wrote by directions from Lord Hertford, by which I was invited to attend his lordship in his embassy to Paris, and to perform the