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The probability to which all the intelligence from my sister has pointed of late turns out to be a fact. There is an engagement, or almost an engagement, announced between my dear Caroline and M. de la Feste to Caroline's sublime happiness, and my mother's entire satisfaction; as well as to that of the Marlets.
It must have been foreseen by my mother for some time that this upshot was probable, and Caroline might have told me more distinctly that M. de la Feste was her lover, instead of alluding so mysteriously to him as only a friend of the Marlets, and lately dropping his name altogether.
He has travelled and seen a great deal, she tells me, and knows more about English literature than she knows herself. July 21. Letter from Caroline. Query: Is 'a friend of ours and the Marlets, of whom she now anonymously and mysteriously speaks, the same personage as the 'M. de la Feste' of her former letters? He must be the same, I think, from his pursuits.
Another letter from Caroline. I have learnt from this epistle, that M. Charles de la Feste is 'only one of the many friends of the Marlets'; that though a Frenchman by birth, and now again temporarily at Versailles, he has lived in England many many years; that he is a talented landscape and marine painter, and has exhibited at the Salon, and I think in London.
It is very strange that she tells me nothing which I expected her to tell only trivial details. She seems dazzled by the brilliancy of Paris which no doubt appears still more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to obtain occasional glimpses of it. She would see that Paris, too, has a seamy side if you live there. I was not aware that the Marlets knew so many people.
Mother has been taken dangerously ill at Versailles: they were within a day or two of starting; but all thought of leaving must now be postponed, for she cannot possibly be moved in her present state. I don't like the sound of haemorrhage at all in a woman of her full habit, and Caroline and the Marlets have not exaggerated their accounts I am certain.
They have accepted a long-standing invitation to visit some old friends of ours, the Marlets, who live at Versailles for cheapness my mother thinking that it will be for the good of Caroline to see a little of France and Paris. But I don't quite like her going.
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