France little dreams how much better it perhaps were, had they also been kept safe in Pignerol!-- The Count, lean and growing old, is not healthy; is ever and anon tormented, and laid up for weeks, with rheumatisms, gouts and ailments: but otherwise he is still a swift ardent elastic spirit; with grand schemes, with fiery notions and convictions, which captivate and hurry off men's minds more than eloquence could, so intensely true are they to the Count himself;--and then his Brother the Chevalier is always there to put them into the due language and logic, where needed.

[Voltaire, xxviii.

74; xxix.

392; &c.] A magnanimous high-flown spirit; thought to be of supreme skill both in War and in Diplomacy; fit for many things; and is still full of ambition to distinguish himself, and tell the world at all moments, "ME VOILA; World, I too am here!"-- His plans, just now, which are dim even to himself, except on the hither skirt of them, stretch out immeasurable, and lie piled up high as the skies.

The hither skirt of them, which will suffice the reader at present, is:-- That your Grand-Duke Franz, Maria Theresa's Husband, shall in no wise, as the world and Duke Franz expect, be the Kaiser chosen.