Note 368 — 318.

Count de Viry, the Sardinian ambassador, as Baron de la Perrière, was formerly Sardinian ambassador in England. There he married Miss Harriet Speed, a niece of Lady Cobham, and one of the heroines of Gray's Long Story who were sent from Lady Cobham's house to rid the country of the "wicked imp they call a poet." "My old friend Miss Speed," writes Gray to Wharton in 1761, "has done a very foolish thing; she has married the Baron de la Perrière, son to the Sardinian Minister, the Count de Viry. He is about twenty-eight years old (ten years younger than herself), but looks nearer forty." In September, 1777, Viry was recalled from Paris, and disgraced, because, as was alleged, his wife had been bribed by Lord Stormont to betray the diplomatic secrets of the court of Turin. Another account is given in Lescure's Correspondence Secrète sur Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, etc.: "M. le Comte de Viry, ambassadeur de Sardaigne, est rappelé à Turin. On croit qu'il y a de la disgrace" (vol. i. p. 74). A secret treaty was signed early in 1777 between Austria, France, Spain, and Sardinia against England, and the secretary of the Comte de Viry "a vendu une copie du traité à milord Stormont" (ibid., vol. i. p. 82). See also, for a third account, Dutensiana (Londres, 1806), pp. 216-219.