class="smcap">Dear Sir,

As Mr. Pavilliard writes to you at present, I will not let slip the occasion of sending my letter by the same post. Give me leave, sir, to demand of you, once more, and to demand of you with the last earnestness, the return of your paternal tenderness, which I have forfeited by the unhappy step I have made. I hope to merit that return by my behaviour. Give me leave, too, to repeat my former demands of some masters, as for the manége for fencing and for dancing. With regard to the last, I own that Mr. Pavilliard, overcome by importunities, and imagining you would not disapprove of it, gave me leave to take it about three months ago, and I actually learn. My health still continues good, and I continue my studies in the same manner I have already described to you. The only news I have to tell you is that the famous Mr. de Voltaire[4] is come to spend, as he says, the rest of his days here. He has bought an estate near Geneva, where he proposes to spend the summer, and to pass the winter at a country house he has hired near Lausanne.

Give me now leave, dear Sir, to finish, repeating the demand of your former affection. If I could hope to hear from you I should think myself completely happy.

I am, dear Sir,
Your most obedient and most dutiful son,
E. Gibbon.

4.

To Miss Catherine Porten.

September 20th, 1755.

Dear Madam,

In compliance with your request, I answer the very day I have received it. I own you had vexed me; not so much in refusing me the money I asked you, as by revealing the thing to my father. But what is done cannot be undone, and as my father has forgiven me, I think I may do as much for you. I consent, then, to the renewal of our correspondence with all my heart. I shall begin by the tail of your letter. My whole debt was not with Gee; a great part was with a person of this town, who has heard reason easily enough. He has consented to receive a note by which I own the debt, and promise to pay him when I can. Gee has not been so easy. After having obliged him to take back the watch and the mare, the debt was still at fifty guineas. I bought him for twenty another watch, paying (as I do still) two guineas a month to the watchmaker, and which Mons. Pavilliard and I contrive to retrench out of my other expenses. Gee left us about four months ago. Have you a mind to know his destiny? Yes. Hear it, then. His parents had ordered him forty guineas for his journey, but as they had allowed him to stay a fortnight at Paris, he was to take twenty more in that place. Gee quits Lausanne in this manner. Suppose him at Lyons. He goes immediately to the correspondent of his banker, for whom he had a letter of recommendation. "Sir," says he, in accosting him, "I have a letter for you from your correspondent, Mons. Grand of Lausanne. You will find in it that he desires you to pay me twenty-five guineas at sight." The banker puts on his spectacles, reads the letter, but finds nothing in it about money. Upon which he tells Gee that certainly there is some mistake, and he cannot give him a farthing before it is cleared up. Gee replies that he must be at Paris a certain day, and that without money he cannot go. In a word, for I hate long stories, the banker gives him the money, but writes to his correspondent at Paris to stop Gee's twenty guineas. He, having some wind of the affair, runs post, day and night, arrives at Paris four hours before the letter, and draws the money. Gee's adventures at Paris would take up a volume, as he played a great deal. Once he had a hundred and fifty thousand livres, French money, in his pocket (£6700), but a week after he was 1500 guineas in debt, thanks to the famous Mr. Taff[5] and some others of much the same stamp. The end was that his mother, though extremely poor, paid all his debts, and sent him into England, where he is now, having lost his commission, having hardly any other resource than his Majesty's highway. So much for Gee.

A tear to poor Nell; she really deserves it. Am glad Nemmy is well married. Would write to my aunt Hester,[6] but know not what to say to her. You tell me Snell and Milton are gone; where? Compliments to Bett Gilbert and to the Darrels[7] since you are at Richmond. I hurry over; but, à propos, who directed your letter, for it is not your hand? I hurry over all these things to come to my father's marriage.

About a fortnight ago I received a vastly kind letter from my father of the 18th of August (inquire the day of his marriage). He forgave me in it all my past faults, promised never to speak of them again to me, provided only I kept the promises I had made him about my future behaviour; allows me to make a little tour about Switzerland, which I had asked him, and tells me that, after having completed my studies and my exercises, he would make me make that of France and Italy. But not a syllable about his marriage.[8] Three days after I heard of it by the canal of a certain Mr. Hugonin, whose father is our neighbour in Hampshire, but without any particularities either of name or anything else. Guess my surprise; you know he had always protested that he never would marry again—at least, had he done it in the time he was angry with me, I should have been less struck; but now what can he mean by it? What frightens me most is what I remember you told me; if my father married again, by my grandfather's will the estate went to the children of the second bed, and that I had only 200 a year, provided the second wife had more fortune than my mother, who had only £1500. You may easily guess the anxiety that has put me in. I have wrote to a friend in England, who I think I can trust to get me a copy of that will out of Doctors' Commons; but though sure of his discretion, I do not know whether he will care to serve me. Could you not do it YOURSELF? and inquire whether my father has not taken care of me by his marriage contract.

You say that Mrs. Gibbon (Miss Patton) has set my father against the Mallets.[9] I do not know if 'tis so very good a sign. Since she was intimate with him when I was under Ward's[10] hands, I should think you must have heard something of her. Do make some inquiries about her and send them me. I wonder what will become of my poor cousin. She will be sold at last. Since they are in