On the 27th of July Turgot writes Hume, mentioning that he had that day met Smith at Baron d'Holbach's, and they had discussed the Rousseau affair together. Smith had told him of the letter from Rousseau to General Conway, which he had been shown on the 25th by the Comtesse de Boufflers, and had repeated to him the same interpretation of that letter which he had already expressed to the Comtesse, viz. that Rousseau had not made the secrecy a ground for refusing the pension, but merely regretted that that condition made it impossible for him adequately to show his gratitude. Smith was thus inclined to give Rousseau the benefit of a better construction when a better construction was possible, but Hume writes Turgot on the 5th of August that Smith was quite wrong in that supposition. One of those two letters of Smith's on the Rousseau affair mentions the name of Madame Riccoboni among those of Hume's friends with whom he had been in communication on the subject, and Madame Riccoboni about the same date writes Garrick that Smith and Changuion, the English ambassador's private secretary, were her two great confidants on the business of this famous quarrel. Madame Riccoboni had been a popular actress, but giving up the stage for letters, had become the most popular novelist in France. Her _Letters of Fanny Butler_ and her _History of Miss Jenny_ were dividing the attention of Paris with the novels of our own Richardson; and Smith, in the 1790 edition of his _Theory_, brackets her with Racine, Voltaire, and Richardson as instructors in "the refinements and delicacies of love and friendship." She was an effusive admirer of Smith, as, indeed, she was of Changuion, and of that _bel Anglais_ Richard Burke, and of Garrick himself;--"you are," she writes the player, "the dearling of my heart";--and when Smith was returning home from France, she gave him the following letter of introduction to Garrick:-- Je suis bien vaine, my dear Mr. Garrick, de pouvoir vous donner ce que je perds avec un regret tres-vif, le plaisir de voir Mr. Smith. Ce charming philosopher vous dira combien il a d'esprit, car je le defie de parler sans en montrer. Je sui vraiment fachee que la politesse m'oblige a lui donner ma lettre ouverte: cet usage etabli retient mon coeur tout pret a lui rendre justice, mais sa modestie est aussi grande que son merite, et je craindrois que la plus simple verite ne parut a ses yeux une grosse flaterie; je puis vous dire de lui, ce qu'il disoit un jour d'un autre--le metier de cet homme-la est d'etre aimable. J'ajouterai,--et de meriter l'estime de tous ceux qui ont le bonheur de le connoitre.