"The billet traced by your noble hands, renders me the happiest of women. My joy is beyond description. Thanks, monsieur le Baron, for your charming flowers. Alas! they will be faded and withered by to-morrow, but not so fleeting and short-lived are the sentiments with which you have inspired me. Believe me, the desire you express to see me again is entirely mutual; and in the impatience with which you await our next interview, I read but my own sentiments. The ardor with which you long to embrace me, is fully equalled by the affection which leads me to desire no gratification greater than that of passing my whole life in your society. Adieu, monsieur le baron; you have forbidden my addressing you as your rank and my respect would have me, I will therefore content myself with assuring you of the ardent affection of the "COMTESSE Du Barry." The signature I adopted was a bold piece of falsehood, but it was too late to recede; besides, I was addressing myself in my letter, not to the king, but to the baron de Gonesse; for Louis, by I know not what unaccountable caprice, seemed to wish to preserve his incognito. I have since learned that Francis I assumed the same name, altho' upon a very different occasion. Replying to a letter from Charles V, in which that emperor had given himself a long string of high sounding titles, he contented himself with simply signing his letter, _"François, baron de Gonesse._" Louis XV was very fond of borrowed appellations. Unlike the vanity so common to mankind, of seeking to set off their pretensions by assumed titles, it is the pleasure of royalty to descend to a lower grade in society when concealment becomes desirable, either from policy or pleasure; and Louis sought in the familiarity in which a plain baron might safely indulge, a relief from the ennui attendant upon the rigid etiquette of a regal state. I had omitted in my letter to the baron, to remind him that we were to meet that very evening, but that did not prevent my repairing to Versailles punctually at the appointed hour. I was conducted into the same apartment as before, where I found the same females who had then assisted at my toilet* again prepared to lend their aid; and from this moment I had a regular establishment of attendants appointed for my use. * A word of which the meaning has greatly changed over the last two centuries. Here it means putting on her clothing, makeup, jewelry, and so forth. Through most of this book it is spelled "toilette".--Transcriber