 from thence to
Marseilles, at which two places he continued for some months: but nothing he met
with being able to dissipate those melancholy ideas which still preyed upon his
imagination, and affected his spirits, he endeavoured to elude them with a
succession of new objects; and with that view, persuaded a counsellor of the
parliament of Aix, a man of great worth, learning and good humour, to accompany
him, in making a tour of those parts of France which he had not yet seen. On
their return from this excursion, they found at Aix an Italian Abbé, a person of
character, and great knowledge of men and books, who having travelled all over
Germany and France, was so far on his return to his own country.
    M-- having, by means of his friend the counsellor, contracted an
acquaintance with this gentleman, and being desirous of seeing some parts of
Italy, particularly the carnival at Venice, they set out together from
Marseilles, in a tartan, for Genoa, coasting it all the way, and lying on shore
every night. Having shewn him what was most remarkable in this city, his friend
the Abbé was so obliging, as to conduct him thro' Tuscany, and the most
remarkable cities in Lombardy, to Venice, where M-- insisted upon defraying the
expence of the whole tour, in consideration of the Abbé's complaisance, which
had been of infinite service to him, in the course of this expedition. Having
remained five weeks at Venice, he was preparing to set out for Rome with some
English gentlemen whom he had met by accident, when he was all of a sudden
obliged to change his resolution, by some disagreeable letters which he received
from London. He had, from his first departure, corresponded with his generous,
though inconstant mistress, with a religious exactness and punctuality; nor was
she, for some time, less observant of the agreement they had made. Nevertheless,
she, by degrees, became so negligent and cold in her expression, and so slack in
her correspondence, that he could not help observing and upbraiding her with
such indifference; and her endeavours to palliate it were supported by pretexts
so frivolous, as to be easily seen through by a lover of very little
discernment.
    While he tortured himself with conjectures about the cause of this
unexpected change, he received such intelligence from England, as, when joined
with what he himself had perceived, by her manner of writing, left him little or
no room to doubt of her fickleness and inconstancy. Nevertheless, as he knew by
experience, that informations of
