"Please to express my most profound respects to Mrs. Mure, and my sense of the honour she did me. If I have leisure before the carrier goes off, I shall write her, and give her some account of my adventures; but I would not show her so little mark of my attention as to write her only in a postscript. I am, dear Baron," &c.[205:1] The correspondence with Madame de Boufflers was occasionally resumed, when Hume or she was absent from Paris. How well the philosopher could upon occasion accommodate himself to the taste of a French lady of the court, the following may suffice to show. HUME _to the_ COMTESSE DE BOUFFLERS. _Compiegne, 6th July, 1764._ We live in a kind of solitude and retirement at Compiegne; at least I do, who, having nothing but a few general acquaintance at court, and not caring to make more, have given myself up almost entirely to study and retreat. You cannot imagine, madam, with what pleasure I return as it were to my natural element, and what satisfaction I enjoy in reading, and musing, and sauntering, amid the agreeable scenes that surround me. But yes, you can easily enough imagine it; you have yourself formed the same resolution; you are determined this summer to tie the broken thread of your studies and literary amusements. If you have been so happy as to execute your purpose, you are almost in the same state as myself, and are at present wandering along the banks of the same beautiful river, perhaps with the same books in your hand, a Racine, I suppose, or a Virgil, and despise all other pleasure and amusement. Alas! why am I not so near you, that I could see you for half an hour a day, and confer with you on these subjects?