The ladies we found clever, handsome, accomplished, and witty, and endowed with some qualities so rare and captivating that they inspired a sincere attachment. Mde. de la Rocheaimon is so perfectly pleasing, good-hearted, sensible, and amiable, that I never yet saw the person before whom I wished to have been my sister. I should like to pass many of my future days in her society. Her cousin, Mde. Peneval, is witty and highly accomplished; she is more _spirituelle_ than the other, and the other is merrier. She is the widow of a French officer, who was attached to the service of P. Henry; upon his death she was penniless with three children. The Prince continues her husband’s pension, lodging, etc.; the more kind, as she is, as she says, ‘La première femme qui ait trouvé grâce auprès de lui.’ His weakness does not lie in his love for the female sex. We supped in a Chinese temple in the garden. It was illuminated, and we had some excellent French horns playing in the wood; it was delicious. The next morning we breakfasted by the lake; I bathed in it. The Prince, and indeed the whole party, did every earthly thing they could imagine would please us; I never experienced such warm-hearted, zealous, unaffected desire of obliging as they manifested towards us. He gave us extra plays, and, in short, did the utmost of his power to convince us how much he was pleased at our visit. Rheinsberg is the place where Frederick II. wrote his _Anti-Machiavel_, and where he lived during the latter end of his father’s life. [Sidenote: AN UNNECESSARY ALARM] Drew grew uncomfortable at staying alone at Potsdam, and employed a certain but alarming method of abridging our pleasure; he said Charles was ill. We set off on Tuesday morning, perfectly persuaded we should find the dear boy, if not quite well, yet at the worst only slightly ill, but we would not risk the possibility of his being really ill, so we went. We travelled all night and reached Potsdam at seven o’clock on Wednesday. Found Charles feverish, but not worse than he has been fifty times since his birth. They left Potsdam two days later, passing through a dreary country to Wittenberg and on to Torgau. From thence to Leipsic and Dresden. We quitted Dresden on Thursday, the 18th of September; dined early before we set off and got in two hours and a half to Meissen. During the night Elliot[149] sent us an _estafette_ with our English letters, among them one from Mr. Moore to tell us the application for leave for us to pass through France was referred from the Duke of Portland’s office to Ld. Grenville’s; one from Mr. Fawkener saying that there were obstacles, but he hoped they might be removed.[150] They left next day for Weimar.