e of your health. Let you be ever so
ill, or averse to company, he forces himself at all times into your
bed-chamber, and if it is necessary to give him a peremptory refusal,
he is affronted. I have known one of those petit maitres insist upon
paying regular visits twice a day to a poor gentleman who was
delirious; and he conversed with him on different subjects, till he was
in his last agonies. This attendance is not the effect of attachment,
or regard, but of sheer vanity, that he may afterwards boast of his
charity and humane disposition: though, of all the people I have ever
known, I think the French are the least capable of feeling for the
distresses of their fellow creatures. Their hearts are not susceptible
of deep impressions; and, such is their levity, that the imagination
has not time to brood long over any disagreeable idea, or sensation. As
a Frenchman piques himself on his gallantry, he no sooner makes a
conquest of a female's heart, than he exposes her character, for the
gratification of his vanity. Nay, if he should miscarry in his schemes,
he will forge letters and stories, to the ruin of the lady's
reputation. This is a species of perfidy which one would think should
render them odious and detestable to the whole sex; but the case is
otherwise. I beg your pardon, Madam; but women are never better
pleased, than when they see one another exposed; and every individual
has such confidence in her own superior charms and discretion, that she
thinks she can fix the most volatile, and reform the most treacherous
lover.

If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished by
repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return he makes
for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is handsome;
if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he suffers a repulse
from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your
daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with
his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one,
but in one shape or another, he will find means to ruin the peace of a
family, in which he has been so kindly entertained. What he cannot
accomplish by dint of compliment, and personal attendance, he will
endeavour to effect, by reinforcing these with billets-doux, songs, and
verses, of which he always makes a provision for such purposes. If he
is detected in these efforts of treachery, and reproached with his
ing