‘I think it high time to enquire of you how you pass your time—what you do—how Mr. Mag (the pony) does, and the four kittens; I hope you have taken care of them and remembered your Papa wants cats. Do the flowers grow well in your garden? Are you a better gardener than you used to be? The Marq. de Guerchy’s little girls have a little house on a little hill, and on one side a little flower garden, and on the other side a little kitchen garden, which they manage themselves and keep very clean from weeds—Bobbin would like much to see it. ‘I have passed through perils and dangers, for a part of the country is infested by 800 plunderers in arms, yet have burnt in only one district near Mâcon twelve chateaus; but I am now passed the worst and hope to escape at last with whole bones. I have a passport, and am carried to the Bourgeois guard at all the towns. ‘Pray, my little girl, take care, and keep clear from weeds the row of grass I sowed in the round garden, on right hand about ten yards long, but don’t take up anything like grass. And if the two willows which I brought last year 1,000 miles from France are alive yet, give them some water; one is by the hole, and the other by Arthur’s garden—I made little mounds around them. You do not know, my little Bobbin, how much I long to have a walk with you at Bradfield. It is a sad thing I have no letter here; I shall have none till Clermont. I desire a particular account of my farm to be sent here. ‘I have been ill from heat and fatigue, and had a sore throat, but by care and an antiseptic diet I am now, thank God, quite well. ‘What do you think of the French at such a moment as this with a free press? yet in this capital of a great province there is not (publickly) one newspaper to be seen; at a coffee house, where twenty tables for company, not one. What blessed ignorance. The Paris m—— have done the whole, and are the only enlightened part of the K——. ‘Adieu, my dear B. ‘I am, yours affectionately, ‘A. Y.’ [In a note A. Y. writes:] ‘I found Madame la Comtesse de Guerchy a very pleasant, agreeable woman, and among other trifles which occurred at their house was an expedition into the kitchen to teach me to make an omelette, the operation attending which occasioned no little merriment both in the kitchen and parlour. I succeeded pretty well.’[137]