This, it will be at once allowed, is a strange instance of coincidence between Bifrons and the lady. The more striking, because the particulars of disagreement show that the two stories do not come from the same source. But how can we account for either story? How came Francis to be in Paris—if in Paris he were—in time of war? With a view to solve this question to my own satisfaction, I once consulted the State Paper Office. It happens that during the summer of 1761, Mr. Hans Stanley was in Paris, on a diplomatic mission, to negotiate terms of peace with Choiseul. He failed in that object—some folks thought Mr. Pitt never meant he should succeed—and returned home in _September_ of that year. His correspondence with Pitt, as Secretary of State, is preserved in the office aforesaid. He seems to have had the ordinary staff of assistants from Pitt’s department: but I could not find any record of their names. His despatches are entirely confined to the subject of the negotiation on which he was engaged, _with one exception_. He seems, for some reason or other, to have taken much interest in the affair of the Jesuits. On August 10, he writes at length on the whole of that matter. To his despatch is annexed a careful _précis_, in Downing Street language, of the history of the Jesuits’ quarrel with the parliament: evidently drawn up by one of his subordinates. Enclosed in this _précis_ is the original printed _Arrêt de la Cour du Parlement, du 6 Août_, 1761, condemning _Molina_, _de Justitiâ et Jure_; _Suares_, _Defensio Fidei Catholicæ_; _Busenbaum_, _Theologia Moralis_; and several other books of the same class, to be _lacérés et brûlés en la cour du Palais_. And a MS. note at the foot of the _Arrêt_ states that the books were burnt on the 7th accordingly.