'I seize the occasion, my dear Comte, afforded me by a cold which has kept me some days by the fire-side, to send you news from this part of the country. The most important, and what will give you the most pleasure is, that M. de Guise has obtained the favor of a cushion at the King's mass; he did not fail to make use of it on Sunday, and between ourselves, with rather too much ostentation. Every one expects wonders from the Marquis de Chastet, who has boasted that he will soon bring the Algerians to terms, but I have no faith in his predictions. The Duc de Vermandois has been raised to the dignity of Admiral. Madame de la Valliere received this mark of the royal favor with the most perfect indifference. I am quite of your opinion: that woman is not in her proper place. 'Did your brother write you that we went together to the first representation of Britannicus? Some admirers of Racine had praised the piece so much to me, that not being able to get a box, I sent my valet at ten o'clock to keep a place for me. I thought that I should never reach the Hotel de Bourgogne, although I left my carriage at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil: without Chapelle and Mauvillain, who know all the actors in Paris, I should never have succeeded in getting a place. Do not mistake this eagerness of the public; there was much more malevolence than curiosity in it. I paid my respects to Madame de Sevigne in her box, where I found Mesdames de Villars, de Coulanges and de La Fayette, escorted by the little Abbe de Villars and de Grignau the _Frondeur_. You may imagine what treatment Britannicus received in that box. Madame de Sevigne said the other day at Madame de Villarceau's that 'Le Racine passerait comme le cafe.' This speech made every one laugh; all agreed that it was as just as it was good. What I most like is the presumption of this tragedy student, who undertakes to make Romans talk for us after our great, our sublime Corneille; but some people think that they can do any thing. I never saw the Hotel de Bourgogne so brilliant. Such a fashionable audience deserved a better piece. The people in the pit yawned, and those in the boxes went to sleep. Vilandry was snoring away in the box of the Commandeur de Louvre. Since he dines at that table, the best kept in Paris, he goes to the theatre to digest _haciendo la siesta_, wakes up when all is over, and pronounces the play detestable. I cannot understand what pleasure the brave and witty Commandeur can take in the society of a man who never opens his mouth but to eat. Despreaux, (Boileau,) beside whom I was sitting, was furious at the coldness of the pit. He protested that it was Racine's chef d'oeuvre; that the ancients had never written any thing finer; that neither Tacitus nor Corneille had ever produced any thing more forcible. He had like to have quarrelled with Subligny, because in the scene where Nero hides behind a curtain to listen to Junia, he could not