Oh, my dear friend, how I want you! my situation becomes every day more painful: – my daughter! – But you shall have all these melancholy accounts when we meet; it is impossible to write them. Mons. de Valcy too gives me all the uneasiness in his power. I now see him very seldom; but I am assured, he is ruining himself by gaming and foolish expences; and that he is passionately in love with a dancer just come on the stage. You will feel into what difficulties the taste will lead him, and what a prospect I have for my daughter! – and what encreases my trouble, is, that she appears absolutely insensible not only of her husband's conduct, but of the loss of her own reputation. It is true, all circumstances seem to unite in prolonging her errors and her blindness. Notwithstanding her glaring imprudencies, she is sought after and well received; without doubt they abuse her when absent, but she is not less in fashion; and this makes her think, that her birth and accomplishments allow her to act with impunity. We must admit one thing, namely, that in our time, that fifteen years ago the world was infinitely less dangerous than it now is. A beauty must then have been very strict in her carriage to be received in it. – What formerly would have cost a young person her reputation, is now scarcely taken notice of. A woman appears alone at twenty, receives all the young people of that age at their houses, has her little boxes, where she is alone with men, or at least without a chaperon; and the same is allowed at the balls after the opera, where they are sometimes accompanied only by a female attendant. Any one of these things in our day would have dishonoured and made a young woman the town talk.