On the whole, I am fully persuaded, from what I hear and see,
that the matter will end as we wish. But in all cases, I
foresee, that, let the event be what it will, you will reap
from it much honour and much vexation. Alas! dear madam, the
former is never a compensation for the latter: especially to
you, whose delicate frame, already shaken by an incident of
much less importance surely, is ill calculated to bear such
violent agitations. Pardon these sentiments if you think them
mean. They are dictated by my friendship for you. I am indeed
so mean as to wish you alive and healthy and gay in any
fortune. A fine consolation for us truly, to see the epithet
of princess inscribed on your grave, while we reflect that it
contains what was the most amiable in the world? I propose to
pay my respects to you the beginning of next week.
_10th December, 1764._
It is needless to inform you, how much you employed my
thoughts in this great crisis of your fortune, of your health,
of your life itself. You could perceive, by undoubted signs,
that I partook sincerely of the violent anxieties, by which I
found you agitated; and that, after having endeavoured in vain
to appease the tumult of your passions, I was at last
necessitated myself to take part in your distress. My sympathy
is not abated by absence. I find myself incapable almost of
other occupation or amusement.
You still recur to my memory. The chief relief I have is in
writing to you, and throwing together some thoughts, which
occur to me, on your subject.
They are mostly the same which occurred in conversation, and
which I have already suggested to you. They will acquire no
additional authority at present in writing, except by
convincing you that they are the result of my most mature
reflections.
Of all your friends, I, as a foreigner, am perhaps the least
capable of giving you advice on so delicate a subject: I only
challenge the preference, in the warmth of my affection and
esteem towards you; and I am, as a foreigner, the farther
removed from all suspicion of separate interests and regards.