"The Abbé tells me, that in the short time they have been with him, their accent is sensibly corrected, and he is persuaded that, in three months' time, it will not be possible to distinguish them from Frenchmen. They are never to hear mass, but to attend at the ambassador's chapel every Sunday. Such is the general account I have to give you; their preceptor will be more particular, and I shall visit them from time to time."[263:1] FOOTNOTES: [209:1] The confidence with which the great aristocracy of birth mingled with whatever elements it thought fit, is perhaps the best evidence of the security it felt in the haughty and arbitrary exercise of its established privileges. With all this free equality of social intercourse, however, there must have been something yet left to which the mere guest was not admitted, and to which he never aspired. Without this, it seems impossible that Actors,--menials by the etiquette of the court, anathematized by the church, held incapable of giving evidence in some courts of law as persons of infamous profession,--should have been so much sought after and caressed. Thus the Le Kains, Fleurys, and Prévilles, among the men; the Sophy Arnoulds, Dumesnils, Clairons, among the women, many of them thorough profligates, are to be found haunting places surrounded by the highest lustre of adventitious rank, busying themselves with state secrets, mingling in family disputes, and always with the easy assurance of their profession. This state of matters could not have existed unless the aristocracy, notwithstanding the ease with which they permitted themselves to be approached, were able effectually to mark precisely the point where the advance was to stop, and could feel themselves among persons, who, like old family servants, never presume upon familiarity. In admitting to social intercourse, however, a person of Hume's dignity of character and position in literature, there could be no such reserves, and the intercourse must have been as really on terms of familiarity as it appeared to be. [211:1] The following is a specimen, of a letter to Hume:-- [Illustration] Among other like distinctions, an author had offered to dedicate to her his Italian Grammar. She answered, "A moi, Monsieur; la dédicace d'une grammaire! à moi qui ne sais pas seulement l'orthographe." "C'était la pure vérité," subjoins Marmontel. [213:1] This active lady visited Voltaire, and succeeded in getting access to him. It is said that the patriarch laboured hard to compose a quatrain in her praise, but that the muse would not attend for such a purpose. He solved the difficulty very ingeniously, by twisting some laurel twigs into a wreath, and placing it on her brow.