provoking"--(she talks a little English).--"Why, what is the matter, Pauline: what is provoking?"--"Why, Mademoiselle look so pretty, I so _mauvais_." There is another indispensable servant, who is called a _frotteur_: his business is to rub the floors. We have a servant who acts as _maitre d'hotel,_ whom I like at present, and who is so very gracious as to act as footman too, to save the expense of another servant, upon condition that we give him a gentleman's suit of clothes in lieu of a livery. Thus, with seven servants and hiring a charwoman upon occasion of company, we may possibly make out to keep house; with less, we should be hooted at as ridiculous, and could not entertain any company. To tell this in our own country would be considered as extravagance; but would they send a person here in a public character to be a public jest? At lodgings in Paris last year, during Mr. Adams's negotiation for a peace, it was as expensive to him as it is now at housekeeping, without half the accommodations. Washing is another expensive article: the servants are all allowed theirs, besides their wages; our own costs us a guinea a week. I have become steward and bookkeeper, determined to know with accuracy what our expenses are, to prevail with Mr. Adams to return to America if he finds himself straitened, as I think he must be. Mr. Jay went home because he could not support his family here with the whole salary; what then can be done, curtailed as it now is, with the additional expense? Mr. Adams is determined to keep as little company as he possibly can; but some entertainments we must make, and it is no unusual thing for them to amount to fifty or sixty guineas at a time. More is to be performed by way of negotiation, many times, at one of these entertainments, than at twenty serious conversations; but the policy of our country has been, and still is, to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. We stand in sufficient need of economy, and in the curtailment of other salaries I suppose they thought it absolutely necessary to cut off their foreign ministers. But, my own interest apart, the system is bad; for that nation which degrades their own ministers by obliging them to live in narrow circumstances, cannot expect to be held in high estimation themselves. We spend no evenings abroad, make no suppers, attend very few public entertainments,--or spectacles, as they are called,--and avoid every expense that is not held indispensable. Yet I cannot but think it hard that a gentleman who has devoted so great a part of his life to the service of the public, who has been the means, in a great measure, of procuring such extensive territories to his country, who saved their fisheries, and who is still laboring to procure them further advantages, should find it necessary so cautiously to calculate his pence, for fear of overrunning them. I will add one more expense. There is now a court mourning, and every foreign minister, with his family,