FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

you must certainly know. Several times Fortune has seemed to smile on me, but I have
suffered each time unexpected reverses. (All this is between just the two of us.) But it
requires only a moment to regain everything, with the connections that I have. Let us
have faith in Providence, in which I have great confidence.
I see with much sorrow that you are very unhappy in New Orleans. I had heard
everything good said about it. One must take care not to let one be deceived.
My uncle Beaugeard is here, still in top form. I love him tenderly. He is leaving in three
days for Avastill [?]. He is the secretary to Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, 85 but I
fear he cannot work much [?] longer. Anyhow, that [position?] will always mean 6000
per year for him, and he will be able to live quietly with our Aunt [on that]. He is staying
with me here. Duault and his family are really living a little too high in the clouds. His
children are charming. His eldest daughter is pretty, nice, and very lovable. She is
already grown up and ready to marry, and she needs only a good income [des rentes] to
be perfect. Here she will remain unmarried all her life without that, as pretty as she is.
Your stay in New Orleans must have helped you [will help you?] to get your daughters
married to good husbands. I see her [Aglae] usually every day. She is a nice girl, but a
little too unsophisticated – imagine this-- I can’t get her to dress up even a little bit the
way she should. She is the portrait of our good uncle in every way, except that she has
no tobacco on the end of her nose. You can’t imagine how lively my uncle is, despite his
back being bent over double. He does his job, which he leaves only with great difficulty,
with much zeal. I fear for the satisfaction of the Duchess, of which he boasts. One can
do not more. I dared not hope, in view of his age, his infirmities, and his absorbed and
sometimes astonished manner, that he would ever succeed [in his work], but on the
contrary he thrives marvelously. His sister Miss de Luppé, is back in Paris with her
daughter Miss de Boeil. <strong>The</strong>y are still living in grand style, and in a way quite opposed
to Aglae [daughter of Nicolas Beaugeard]. <strong>The</strong>y are, however, very fine persons, and I
see them frequently.
As for the Misses Olives, who call themselves the Mesdemoiselles de Cubières, they
have had their heads completely turned by their mother’s title of Marquess. Good old
Aunt Olive and the mother of Madame Fourbequeuse [?] are hardly prepared for the so
evident vanity of their grandchildren. Well, “autre tempe, autre moeurs [a different time,
different manners]. I don’t see them at all, moreover, and that is very good for my
pocketbook.
Tomorrow I go to dine at the Duaults, and to show them your letter, and to chat about
you, dear sister. Only there do I find good friends of yours in France, for the Du Puy and
“Fauchette’s husband” [the latter in English] have acted very badly towards you. It is all
the more wrong, in that they are rich.
85 This duchess was the daughter of Louis XVI; this uncle (Nicolas-Joseph Beaugeard (1755-1818)) was
her secretary. Hughes de Boiry Buchepot states that the uncle began his service as secretary beginning on 1
January 1815, but this would contradict the estimated date of this letter.
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