The last accounts brought from France fill me with more horror than any former ones. The King is to be moved only by the fear of some approaching danger to his person. The Queen is agitated by all the alarming and distressing thoughts imaginable. Her health is visibly altered; she cries continually, and is, as Polinitz says of K(ing) James's Queen, une Arethuse. Her danger has been imminent; and the K(ing) left his capital, and her in it, as he was advised to do, il eut ete fait d'elle; she would have been, probably, dragged to the Hotel de Ville, et auroit fini ses jours en Greve. She holds out her children, which are called les enfans de la Reine exclusivement, as beggars in the streets do theirs, to move compassion. Behold, how low they have reduced a Queen! But as yet she is not ripe for tragedy, so John St. John may employ his muse upon other subjects for a time. To speak the truth, all these representations of the miseries of the French nation do not seem to me (very decent) proper subjects for our evening spectacles, and it is not, in my apprehension, quite decent that Mr. Hughes, Mr. Astley, or Mr. St. John should be making a profit by Iron Masques, and Toupets stuck upon Poles. The D(uke) of Orleans's embassy here is universally considered as one devised for his own personal safety, and he is equally respected here and abroad. The subject of his credentials and object of negotiation had no more in them than to say that his most Xtian Majesty desired to know how his brother the K(ing) of England did. The answer to which was, very well, with thanks for his obliging enquiries. The King speaks to the D(uke) of O(rleans) civilly, mais il en demeure la. His behaviour to the Duc de Luxembourg(271) and to other Frenchmen of quality was more distinguished. He talked yesterday to M. de Luxembourg for an hour and 17 minutes. You know how exact we courtiers are upon these points. Charles Fox was at Court, but was scarcely spoke to. Il n'en fut pour cela plus rebute. He stayed in the apartments till five in the afternoon. Others of the Opposition were there. Lord North came to Court with his son-in-law, Mr. D.(272) I must wait for a future opportunity of paying my court. The Duke has finished his, I believe, for the present. I expected to have found him here or in London. He went again into Scotland last Friday, and will not be returned in a month, and this sans qu'il m'en ait averti. Il faut avouer que notre Duc, a regard de tous les petits devoirs de la vie, est fort a son aise. Me de Cambis is also come; il en fourmille, but all of them almost beggars; some few, I hear, have letters of credit. Poor Me de Boufflers, as Lady Lucan writes me word, is dans un etat pitoyable. But for the French, brisons la pour le present.