paints caricatures. Now for your own commissions,
which you seem to have forgotten. You mention nothing of the patterns
which you received by Monsieur Tollot, though I told you in a former
letter, which you must have had before the date of your last, that I
should stay till I received the patterns pitched upon by your ladies; for
as to the instructions which you sent me in Madame Monconseil's hand, I
could find no mohairs in London that exactly answered that description; I
shall, therefore, wait till you send me (which you may easily do in a
letter) the patterns chosen by your three graces.

I would, by all means, have you go now and then, for two or three days,
to Marechal Coigny's, at Orli; it is but a proper civility to that
family, which has been particularly civil to you; and, moreover, I would
have you familiarize yourself with, and learn the interior and domestic
manners of, people of that rank and fashion. I also desire that you will
frequent Versailles and St. Cloud, at both of which courts you have been
received with distinction. Profit of that distinction, and familiarize
yourself at both. Great courts are the seats of true good-breeding; you
are to live at courts, lose no time in learning them. Go and stay
sometimes at Versailles for three or four days, where you will be
domestic in the best families, by means of your friend Madame de
Puisieux; and mine, l'Abbe de la Ville. Go to the King's and the
Dauphin's levees, and distinguish yourself from the rest of your
countrymen, who, I dare say, never go there when they can help it. Though
the young Frenchmen of fashion may not be worth forming intimate
connections with, they are well worth making acquaintance of; and I do
not see how you can avoid it, frequenting so many good French houses as
you do, where, to be sure, many of them come. Be cautious how you
contract friendships, but be desirous, and even industrious, to obtain a
universal acquaintance. Be easy, and even forward, in making new
acquaintances; that is the only way of knowing manners and characters in
general, which is, at present, your great object. You are 'enfant de
famille' in three ministers' houses; but I wish you had a footing, at
least, in thirteen and that, I should think, you might easily bring
about, by that common chain, which, to a certain degree, connects those
you do not with those you do know.

For instance, I suppose that neither Lord Albemarle, nor Marquis de St.
Germain, would ma