MY DEAR FRIEND: Yesterday I received your letter of the 30th past, by which I find that you had not then got mine, which I sent you the day after I had received your former; you have had no great loss of it; for, as I told you in my last, this inactive season of the year supplies no materials for a letter; the winter may, and probably will, produce an abundant crop, but of what grain I neither know, guess, nor care. I take it for granted, that Lord B———‘surnagera encore’, but by the assistance of what bladders or cork-waistcoats God only knows. The death of poor Mr. Legge, the epileptic fits of the Duke of Devonshire, for which he is gone to Aix-la-Chapelle, and the advanced age of the Duke of Newcastle, seem to facilitate an accommodation, if Mr. Pitt and Lord Bute are inclined to it.
You ask me what I think of the death of poor Iwan, and of the person who ordered it. You may remember that I often said, she would murder or marry him, or probably both; she has chosen the safest alternative; and has now completed her character of femme forte, above scruples and hesitation. If Machiavel were alive, she would probably be his heroine, as Caesar Borgia was his hero. Women are all so far Machiavelians, that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation. She will, perhaps, meet, before it is long, with some Scythian as free from prejudices as herself. If there is one Oliver Cromwell in the three regiments of guards, he will probably, for the sake of his dear country, depose and murder her; for that is one and the same thing in Russia.
You seem now to have settled, and ‘bien nippe’ at Dresden. Four sedentary footmen, and one running one, ‘font equipage leste’. The German ones will give you, ‘seine Excellentz’; and the French ones, if you have any, Monseigneur.
My own health varies, as usual, but never deviates into good. God bless you, and send you better!
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