Beauvais, who offers to take them: they would live in the house with him alone; but he proposes that they should go to all the classes of the university, where they would make acquaintance with French boys, and nobody would ever ask questions about their religion: But as I heard you declare against their going to the university, (which yet I should highly approve of,) I cannot make any bargain with Eriot. The misfortune is, I go to Fontainbleau to-morrow se'ennight, and must conclude a bargain without hearing from you, by this fine trick Lord March has played me. It is probable, therefore, it will be with Anson, because you yourself did not disapprove of that plan; and I should be afraid to depart from it considerably, without your authority. If you give me information in time, I shall come from Fontainbleau to settle your boys. In any case make them come immediately to the Hotel de Brancas, where they will not want friends if any of the family be in town. "Since I wrote the above, one of my numerous scouts came to me, and told me, that within gunshot of the Hotel de Brancas, there was to be found all I could wish, and more than I could have imagined. It is called La Pension Militaire. I immediately went to see it. I found there an excellent airy house, with an open garden belonging to it. It is the best house but one in Paris; has a prospect and access into the large open space of the Invalids, and from thence into the fields. The number of boys is limited to thirty-five, whom I saw in the court, in a blue uniform with a narrow silver lace. They left off their play, and made me a bow with the best grace in the world, as I passed. I was carried to their master the Abbé Choquart, who appeared to me a sensible, sedate, judicious man, agreeable to the character I had received of him. He carried me through the boys' apartments, which were cleanly, light, spacious, and each lay in a small bed apart. I saw a large collection of instruments for experimental philosophy. I saw an ingenious machine for teaching chronology. There were plans of fortification. While I was considering these, I heard a drum beat in the court. It was the hour for assembling the boys for their military exercises. I went down. They had now all got on their belts, and had their muskets in their hands. They went through all the Prussian exercises with the best air and greatest regularity imaginable. Almost all were about your son's age, a year or two more or less. They are the youth of the best quality in France; their air and manners seemed to bespeak it. The master asked only about thirteen hundred livres a-year for each of your boys, five hundred for the preceptor. He supplies them with all masters, except those of dancing, music, and designing; for these they have masters that come in, who take only eight livres a-month, though they require from others three louis-d'ors. There is a riding master belonging to the house. Your