"The monarch, who then reigned in France, was the king of Spain's grandfather, and his court was justly esteemed the most magnificent, most polite, and most gallant in Europe. I appeared there as a phænomenon. 'A young lord of Congo,' says a beautiful marquise. 'That must be surely very diverting: those men are better then ours. I think Congo is not far from Morocco.' Suppers were given, to which I was invited. Let my discourse have ever so little sense in it, it was found fine, admirable: people retracted, who had at first done me the honour to suspect that I had not common sense. 'He is a charming man,' says another court lady briskly: 'it would be murther to suffer so pretty a figure to return into a wretched country, where the women are narrowly watched by men who are no longer so. Is it true, sir? 'Tis said, that they have nothing. That is very unseemly in a man.'----'But,' adds another, 'we must keep this great boy here, (for he is well born) tho' he were only made a knight of Malta. I engage, if you will, to procure him an employment; and the dutchess Victoria, my old friend, will speak to the king in his favor, if it be requisite.' "I soon had indubitable proofs of their good-will, and I put the marquise into a condition of pronouncing on the merit of the inhabitants of Morocco and Congo. I found that the employment, which the dutchess and her friend had promised me, was difficult to execute, and therefore gave it up. It was in this recess that I learned to form those noble passions of twenty-four hours. I circulated during six months in a vortex, where the beginning of an adventure did not wait for the end of another; because enjoyment was the only thing intended. Or if that was slow in coming, or as soon as it was obtained, we ran upon the scent of new pleasures." "What do you tell me, Selim?" interrupted the favorite. "Decency is then unknown in those countries?" "Pardon me, madam," replied the old courtier. "They have scarcely any other word in their mouths. But the French women are no more slaves to the thing than their neighbors." "What neighbors?" says Mirzoza. "The English women," replied Selim, "who are cold and scornful in appearance, but passionate, voluptuous, vindictive; less witty and more rational than the French women. These love the jargon of sentiment, those prefer the expression of pleasure. But at London as at Paris, people love, separate, rejoin to separate again. From the daughter of a lord bishop (these are a sort of Bramins who do not keep celibacy) I passed to a baronet's wife. While he was warmly supporting the interest of the nation in the house of commons, against the attempts of the court; his wife and I had quite different debates in his house. But the session was closed, and madam was obliged to attend her knight to his manor. I then light upon a colonel's wife, whose regiment was quartered along the sea-coast: I afterwards belong'd to the lady mayoress. Ah, what a woman! I should never have seen Congo