[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
SIB,--The following link with the past" is, I think, very re- markable. In 1853 a French officer of my acquaintance, Count Charles de Sommerard, was dining at a table where he found himself seated near a very aged lady, who remarked casually : "My husband once said to Louis XIV " My friend thought the old lady must be insane, but was told that she was the Duchesse de Richelieu, widow of the fimous Armand du Plessis, Due de Richelieu, and Marshal of France (the captor of Port Mahon), who died in 1788. The Duo married his third wife in 1784, when he was eighty-eight years old, his bride being eighteen years old. She died, I believe, in 1855. This, then, was a substantial link between the Second Empire and the reign of the " Grand Monarque," or between the reign of Queen Victoria and that of William of Orange (for the Due de Richelieu was born in 1696). The Due d8 Richelieu knew the great Duke of Marlborough, and his third wife was well acquainted with the Duke of Wellington. The Due knew Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and was intimate with Bolingbroke. His widow knew Mr. Disraeli, possibly Mr. Gladstone, and almost certainly Lord Granville, who was an Attaché at the British Embassy in Paris in 1836. I saw this in the St. Tames's Gazette many years ago, and send an exact copy to you. I may add that this " link with the past "
was signed "J. B. R."—I am, Sir, &c., A. E. T.
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