The secretary's residence in the metropolis was occasionally varied by official sojourns to Fontainbleau, or Compiègne, a visit to the Duchesse de Barbantane at Villers Cotterets, or an excursion with Madame de Boufflers and the Prince of Conti to L'Ile-Adam. That rural seat of princely magnificence and hospitality is a familiar name in the memoirs of the times; and particularly in those of Madame de Genlis. It is singular, indeed, that this lady never mentions Hume, though she appears to have been living in the castle at the time when he visited it. The Prince of Conti was in every way possessed of the external qualifications which, in the eyes of his countrymen, were then the proper ornaments of his high station. He was brave, a distinguished military leader, generous, extravagant, gallant, and a lover of literature and the arts.[221:1] There was probably little in such a character to rival a Turgot, or a D'Alembert in Hume's esteem; but his intercourse with this prince, as with De Rohan, De Choiseul, and others, would be of a more limited and formal character.[221:2] His influence with courtiers and statesmen, however, appears to have been considerable. In the letters addressed to him there are several instances where French people solicit his interposition with the great: thus, Madame Helvétius desires his good offices to procure an abbaye for her friend and neighbour the Abbé "Macdonalt," of an illustrious Irish family.[222:1] One lady, seeking ecclesiastical patronage, tells him that the clergy will have more pleasure in doing him a favour than in performing the functions of their office! Hume has thus recorded in his "own life" the impression left on him by his reception in Paris:--"Those who have not seen the strange effects of modes, will never imagine the reception I met with at Paris, from men and women of all ranks and stations. The more I resiled from their excessive civilities, the more I was loaded with them. There is, however, a real satisfaction in living at Paris; from the great number of sensible, knowing, and polite company with which that city abounds above all places in the universe. I thought once of settling there for life." If he thought that he could have taken up his residence in Paris, and preserved for the remainder of his days the fresh bloom of his reputation, he was undoubtedly mistaken; but, dazzled as he in some measure was, we can see in his correspondence that he estimated the sensation he made pretty nearly at its just value. In the circle of toys, seized and discarded, by a giddy fashionable crowd, philosophy will have its turn, as well as poodles, parrots, tulips, monkeys, cafés, and black pages. It had been so a century earlier, when the most abstruse works of Des Cartes had been the ornament of every fashionable lady's toilette; and now the wheel had revolved and philosophy was again in vogue.