442. ARCHITECTURE, Fascination of.—
Here I am gazing whole hours at the
Maison quarrée, like a lover at his mistress.
The stocking weavers and silk spinners
around it consider me a hypochondriac Englishman,
about to write with a pistol the last
chapter of his history. This is the second
time I have been in love since I left Paris.
The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de
Laye-Epinaye in Beaujolois, a delicious morsel
of sculpture, by M. A. Slodtz. This, you
will say, was in rule, to fall in love with a
female beauty; but with a house! it is out of
all precedent. No, madame, it is not without
a precedent in my own history. While in
Paris I was violently smitten with the Hotel
de Salm, and used to go to the Tuileries almost
daily, to look at it.—
To Madame La Comtesse De Tesse. Washington ed. ii, 131.
(N.,
1787 )
