Pagina:Baretti - Prefazioni e polemiche.djvu/343

count Manucci. I do not recollect that either of them appeared at that disconsolate house before her setting out for Bath, and have reason to suspect her honesty at the time she penned those few periods. Was the paragraph a due compliment to doctor Taylor and that lady, or were their names brought in it but the other day as a contrast to mine, that the blow she aimed at me might fall u-ith redoubled force upon my poor head? Hester Lynch, Hester Lj-nch, I have often read the blackest pages of thy heart, as thou well knowest; therefore bc not surprised at my surmise. My suspecting thee of dealing false with me is backed by the inefficacy of thy malicious paragraph, which, as it váW presently be seen, produced as much effect in the mind of him to whom it was directed, as if he had never received that letter of thine.

Be this as it will, ali that day and the t\vo followáng, the parents, the count and rayself were quite immersed in sorrow, as the boy had been a favourite with us ali and had well deserved to be so. But on the fourth day, as the fits had nearly ceased, madam abruptly proposed to set out immediately for Bath, as wishing to avoid the sight of the funeral, that began now to be thought on. Her eldest daughter, who had been a while in a precarious state of health, she would take with her, in hopes that the joumey and the air of Bath would do her good ; but she had no man-friend to go with her and take care of her during the excursion. To travel with people in the deepest affliction is certainly no pleasant thing; jet as the count did not offer to go, I made a tender of mjself without the least hesitation, and my company was accepted with thanks, that I am confident were unfeigned, at least in that single instance. I just asked leave to run home to fetch some wearing-apparel while the horses were putting to her coach, reached Salibili that same evening, and Bath in three days more. I must however not forget telling, that a few minutes before our setting out, doctor Johnson arrived in a post-chaise from Litchfield, as madam, among her first fits, had found a lucky interval to acquaint him with her thunder-storm, as we see by his answer in her publication;