s prevenir sur
une visite que vous recevrez a Londres. Mr. Smith, un
Ecossois, homme d'un tres grand merite, aussi distingue par
son bon naturel, par la douceur de son caractere que par son
esprit et son scavoir, me demande une lettre pour vous. Vous
verrez un philosophe moral et pratique; gay, riant, a cent
lieues de la pedanterie des notres. Il vous estime beaucoup
et desire vous connoitre particulierement. Donnez son nom a
votre porte, je vous en prie, vous perdriez beaucoup a ne
pas le voir, et je serois desolee de ne pas recevoir de lui
un detail du bon accueil que vous lui aurez fait.... Donnez
son nom a votre porte, je vous le repete. S'il ne vous voit
pas, je vous etrangle.[173]

Smith had apparently begged of her also a letter of introduction to R.
Burke, and she wrote him one, but he went away without it; as she says
to Garrick, in a letter of 3rd January 1767: "Ma bete de philosophe
est partie sans songer a la prendre." Nor apparently had Smith as yet
delivered her letter to Garrick, for she asks, "Vous ne l'avez pas
encore vu Mr. Smith? c'est la plus distraite creature! mais c'est une
des plus aimables. Je l'aime beaucoup et je l'estime encore
d'avantage."[174] A few weeks later, on the 29th of January, she again
returns to the subject of Smith, asking Garrick whether he had yet
seen him, whether he was in London or had delivered her letter, and
adding, "C'est un homme charmant, n'est-il pas?"[175]

Madame Riccoboni was not the only Frenchwoman who was touched with
Smith's personal charms; we hear of another, a marquise, "a woman too
of talents and wit," who actually fell in love with him. It was during
an excursion Smith made from Paris to Abbeville, with the Duke of
Buccleugh and several other English noblemen and a certain Captain
Lloyd, a retired officer, who was afterwards a friend, perhaps a
patient, of Dr. Currie, the author of the _Life of Burns_, and told
the doctor this and many other anecdotes about the economist. Lloyd
was, according to Currie, a most interesting and accomplished man, and
his acquaintance with Smith was one of great intimacy. The party seem
to have stayed some days at Abbeville--to visit Crecy, no doubt, like
patriotic Englishmen, and this French marquise was stopping at the
same hotel. She had just come from Paris, where she found all the
world talking about Hume, and having heard that Smith was Hume's
particular fri