[23] Now Marquis of Tancos.
[24] About the period of the present king’s accession, several ladies of this description had bounced into the peerage; but as they did not walk at the coronation, somebody observed, it was odd enough that the peeresses best accustomed to a free use of their limbs, declined stirring a step upon this occasion. Horace Walpole mentions this bon mot in some of his letters; I forget to whom he attributes it.
[25] The personage in question paid dearly for having listened to evil counsellors and exciting the suspicions of the church. In about a twelvemonth after this conversation, the small pox, not attended to so skilfully as it might have been, was suffered to carry him off, and reduced his imperious widow to a mere cipher in the politics of a court she had begun very successfully to agitate. To this period the cruel distress of the queen’s mind may be traced. The conflict between maternal tenderness and what she thought political duty, may be supposed with much greater probability to have produced her fatal derangement, than all the scruples respecting the Aveiro and Tavoura confiscations which the fanatical, interested priest, who succeeded my excellent friend, excited.
[26] A well-known wily diplomatist, afterwards ambassador at Constantinople.
[27] He resided afterwards at Paris in a diplomatic character, and is supposed to have been implicated in some of the least amiable events of the revolution. A mysterious passage in the first volume of Soulavie’s Memoirs is said to refer to him. He was particularly intimate with citizen Egalité.
[28] A nephew of the famous Angelica, and no indifferent painter himself.
[29] I have seen a beautiful portrait, engraved by Selma, of this image, and dedicated in due form to its first lady of the dressing-room, Marchioness of Cogolhudo, Duchess of San Estévan, &c.