I beg of
your excellency to let me receive your orders at Paris, which I will
send to your hostel to receive. The Dutchess of Wharton, who is with me,
desires leave to wait on Mrs. Walpole, if you think proper.
'I am, &c.'
After this, the ambassador could do no less than receive him; but he was
somewhat disgusted when on leaving him the duke frankly told
him--forgetting all about his penitent letter, probably, or too reckless
to care for it--that he was going to dine with the Bishop of
Rochester--Atterbury himself, then living in Paris--whose society was
interdicted to any subject of King George. The duke, with his usual
folly, touched on other subjects equally dangerous, his visit to Rome,
and his conversion to Romanism; and, in short, disgusted the cautious
Mr. Walpole. There is something delightfully impudent about all these
acts of Wharton's; and had he only been a clown at Drury Lane instead of
an English nobleman, he must have been successful. As it is, when one
reads of the petty hatred and humbug of those days, when liberty of
speech was as unknown as any other liberty, one cannot but admire the
impudence of his Grace of Wharton, and wish that most dukes, without
being as profligate, would be as free-spoken.
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