In England many are the tales of scandal that have been related of the Consul and all his family: I don't believe them. A lady told me it was "vraiment extraordinaire qu'un jeune homme comme lui ait de moeurs si exemplaires--et d'ailleurs on ne s'attend pas qu'un homme soit fidèle à une femme qui est plus agée que lui: mais si agée aussi! Il aime la soumission plus que la beauté: s'il lui dit de se coucher à huit heures, elle se couche: s'il faut se lever à deux heures, elle se leve! Elle est une bonne femme, elle a sauvé bien des vies." Has Maria told you that she has had her _Belinda_ translated into French by the young Count de Segur, an amiable young man of one of the most ancient families of France, married to a grand-daughter of the Chancellor d'Aguesseau? Many people support themselves by writing for journals, and by translating English books, yet the price of literature seems very low, and the price of all the necessaries of life very high. The influx of English has, they say, doubled the price of lodgings and of all luxuries. MARIA EDGEWORTH _to_ MRS. RUXTON. PARIS, _Dec. 1, 1802._ I have been treasuring up for some time everything I have seen and heard which I think would interest you; and now my little head is so full that I must empty it, or it would certainly burst. All that I have seen and heard has tended to attach me more firmly to you by the double effect of resemblance and of contrast. Every agreeable person recalls you; every disagreeable, makes me exclaim, how different, etc. I wish I could paint the different people we have seen in little William's magic-lanthorn, and show them to you. At Madame Delessert's house there are, and have been for years, meetings of the most agreeable and select society in Paris: she has the courage absolutely to refuse to admit either man or woman of whose conduct she cannot approve; at other houses there is sometimes a strange mixture. To recommend Madame Delessert still more powerfully to you, I must tell you that she was the benefactress of Rousseau; he was, it is said, never good or happy except in her society: to her bounty he owed his retreat in Switzerland. She is nobly charitable, but if it were not for her friends no one would find out half the good she does. One of her acts of beneficence is recorded in Berquin's _Ami des Enfans_, but even her own children cannot tell in which story it is. Her daughter, Madame Gautier, gains upon our esteem every day.