Chapter CXXX: Letter CXIX: THE ROCKS, Sunday, January 22, 1690

Good heavens, what a situation you are in! how pressing a one! and how much and sensibly I am grieved at it! But, my child, how weak and futile are wishes upon such occasions! and how needless it is to tell you that if I had now, as I have had, some portable sum which depended on me, it should soon be yours! I am overwhelmed with a host of little creditors who dun and threaten me, and I do not know whether I shall be able to satisfy them, as I had hoped to do; for I am quite suffocated by the obligation I am under of paying immediately 5000 livres by way of fine, and the price of the estate of Madame d’Acigné, which I have purchased, to avoid paying 10,000 if I had waited two years longer. Such, then, is my situation; but this is only to acquaint you with the utter impossibility of my assisting you. Your brother appears to me to feel for you, and I am persuaded he would perform his duty better than your rich prelates, if the times were as they have been, that is, if it were possible to borrow. He will talk to you himself, and tell you his opinion of your affairs. I have also set forth to him the embarrassments of your little colonel; he mentioned the subject to me the first, some time ago, pitying and regretting, like us, that the chevalier had not the management of him for the first year or two; nothing could have been of so much service to him as such a master; in short, my dearest child, no one but God can confine so great a number of disagreeable things within the bounds of resignation, in which you appear to me. To return to my son; he had some anxiety on seeing a stripling of seventeen or eighteen at the head of such a troop. He remembers enough of past times to know how difficult it is at that age to command old officers; and this difficulty would have been removed, if he could have had his uncle to establish him; this is a very disagreeable and delicate time for him. Can not you assist him with some prudent counselor, to advise him a little? For, in short, he is alone, and can not at his age know a profession that requires more experience than any other. I have conjured you to send for the marquis to Grignan; what will he do during the carnival at Paris and Versailles? do you think he will acquit himself well of the duty and compliments he has to go through? I perhaps do him wrong; but he is very young, and little accustomed to this business; in short, I think he has more to perform than he is equal to. I resign the pen to my son; I will resume it again presently.