I verily believe my Irish _adventurer_ at _Perpignan_, is a gentleman, and therefore I relieved him; I am thoroughly persuaded my _Challons_ adventurer is not, yet perhaps he was a real object of charity, and his true tale would have produced him better success than his _borrowed story_. _Sir James_ was about sixty, _Lady Shortall_ about fifty.--_Sir James_ too had a pretty large property in America, and would have visited his estates on that continent, had I not informed him of the present unhappy differences now subsisting between that and the mother country, of which he had not heard a single syllable.
After having said thus much, I think I must treat you with a copy of _Lady Shortall's_ letter, a name very applicable to their unhappy situation, for they did indeed seem short of every thing;--so here it is, _verbatim et literatim_:
"_Monsieur Thickness gentilhomme anglaise_
"Adorable preince de monaco que tout mordonne deme, lise au de fus de cette lette le non deun digne homme qui me randu ser visse, je suis malade, le convan; serois preferable a mon bouneur je veux sepandant sauve non marij mais je me meure tre seve mon derinier soupire, je ne le doit qua vous.
"JULIE BARONNE DE CHATTERRE. _le 18 May 1776._"
"_A sont altess ele preince de Monaco, dans sont hautelle rue de Vareinne a Paris_."
From _Challons_ to _Bonne_, is five leagues. _Bonne_ is a good town, well walled-in, pleasantly situated, and remarkable for an excellent and well-conducted Hospital, where the poor sick are received _gratis_, without distinction, and where the rich sick are accommodated with nurses, physicians, medicines, food, and lodging, with every assistance that can be wanted, for four livres a day. The apartments in which the poor are received, are so perfectly clean and sweet, that they are fit for people of any condition; but those provided for the better sort, are indeed sumptuously furnished. The women who act as nurses, are of a religious order, and wear a particular, decent, and uniform habit, to which their modest deportment exactly coincides; yet most of them are young, and many of them very beautiful.