Iflatter myself, my dear child, you will receive this letter with pleasure, since it is written to acquaint you, that your mother will have the happiness to embrace you in a few days. I shall set out next Friday, and, though I know all your tenderness for me, yet I must tell you it is impossible for you to form a just idea of the pleasure I shall have in seeing you again. No, my dear child, there is no sentiment to be held in competition with the affection of a tender mother! If Nature has not made you my daughter, are you not the child of my adoption? And do you think I can ever love those more whom chance has given me? In short, I am going to receive the reward due to my fortitude and resolution, which have so long resisted your pressing intreaties, so often repeated, to let you come to Languedoc. It was of too much consequence to your husband's affairs, and the happiness of your own life, that you should remain at Paris, and that I should give up the ardent desire I had to see you to such prudential reasons. It is thus, my dear child, we ought to shew our affection. And now I may tell you, that for this twelvemonth past I have earnestly wished to return to Paris; and that it has cost me more pain to consent with a good grace to stay here these last six months, than the whole four years we agreed upon. But Mons. d’ Almane thought with great reason, that we should not leave the country till the month of August, the season of the vintage being a great amusement to the children; and, besides, it would give them more cause to regret the pleasant country life they had led, and the situation where they had received their improvements. Adieu! my dear child.