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Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI. — Complete

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Title: Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI. — Complete

Author: Mme. Du Hausset
        princesse de Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan Lamballe


        
Release date: August 25, 2004 [eBook #3883]
                Most recently updated: January 9, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3883

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF THE COURTS OF LOUIS XV AND XVI. — COMPLETE ***




Produced by David Widger





MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XV. AND XVI.

Being Secret Memoirs of Madame du Hausset,
Lady’s Maid to Madame de Pompadour,
and of an unknown English Girl
and the Princess Lamballe.



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Louis the Fifteenth

“It Was an Indigestion

Madame du Hausset

Madame de Pompadour

Madame Adelaide

Madame Sophie

Madame Elizabeth

Mirabeau and the Queen

Princess de Lamballe

Marie Antoinette in the Temple

Interviewing Little Louis

Marie Antoinette to the Guillotine





ADVERTISEMENT.

[FROM THE LONDON MAGAZINE, NO. III.  NEW SERIES  P. 439.]

We were obliged by circumstances, at one time, to read all the published
memoirs relative to the reign of Louis XV., and had the opportunity of
reading many others which may not see the light for a long time yet to
come, as their publication at present would materially militate against
the interest of the descendants of the writers; and we have no hesitation
in saying that the Memoirs of Madame du Hausset are the only perfectly
sincere ones amongst all those we know.  Sometimes, Madame du Hausset
mistakes, through ignorance, but never does she wilfully mislead, like
Madame Campan, nor keep back a secret, like Madame Roland, and MM.
Bezenval and Ferreires; nor is she ever betrayed by her vanity to invent,
like the Due de Lauzun, MM. Talleyrand, Bertrand de Moleville, Marmontel,
Madame d’Epinay, etc.  When Madame du Hausset is found in contradiction
with other memoirs of the same period, we should never hesitate to give
her account the preference.  Whoever is desirous of accurately knowing
the reign of Louis XV. should run over the very wretched history of
Lacretelle, merely for the dates, and afterwards read the two hundred
pages of the naive du Hausset, who, in every half page, overturns half a
dozen misstatements of this hollow rhetorician.  Madame du Hausset was
often separated from the little and obscure chamber in the Palace of
Versailles, where resided the supreme power, only by a slight door or
curtain, which permitted her to hear all that was said there.  She had
for a ‘cher ami’ the greatest practical philosopher of that period, Dr.
Quesnay, the founder of political economy.  He was physician to Madame de
Pompadour, and one of the sincerest and most single-hearted of men
probably in Paris at the time.  He explained to Madame du Hausset many
things that, but for his assistance, she would have witnessed without
understanding.




INTRODUCTION.

A friend of M. de Marigny (the brother of Madame de Pompadour) called on
him one day and found him burning papers.  Taking up a large packet which
he was going to throw into the fire “This,” said he, “is the journal of a
waiting-woman of my sister’s.  She was a very estimable person, but it is
all gossip; to the fire with it!”  He stopped, and added, “Don’t you
think I am a little like the curate and the barber burning Don Quixote’s
romances?”--“I beg for mercy on this,” said his friend.  “I am fond of
anecdotes, and I shall be sure to find some here which will interest me.”
 “Take it, then,” said M. de Marigny, and gave it him.

The handwriting and the spelling of this journal are very bad.  It
abounds in tautology and repetitions.  Facts are sometimes inverted in
the order of time; but to remedy all these defects it would have been
necessary to recast the whole, which would have completely changed the
character of the work.  The spelling and punctuation were, however,
corrected in the original, and some explanatory notes added.

Madame de Pompadour had two waiting-women of good family.  The one,
Madame du Hausset, who did not change her name; and another, who assumed
a name, and did not publicly announce her quality.  This journal is
evidently the production of the former.

The amours of Louis XV.  were, for a long time, covered with the veil of
mystery.  The public talked of the Parc-aux-Cerfs, but were acquainted
with none of its details.  Louis XIV., who, in the early part of his
reign, had endeavoured to conceal his attachments, towards the close of
it gave them a publicity which in one way increased the scandal; but his
mistresses were all women of quality, entitled by their birth to be
received at Court.  Nothing can better describe the spirit of the time
and the character of the Monarch than these words of Madame de Montespan:

“He does not love me,” said she, “but he thinks he owes it to his
subjects and to his own greatness to have the most beautiful woman in his
kingdom as his mistress.”






SECRET MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XV.,
AND MEMOIRS OF MADAME DU HAUSSET.


An early friend of mine, who married well at Paris, and who has the
reputation of being a very clever woman, has often asked me to write down
what daily passed under my notice; to please her, I made little notes, of
three or four lines each, to recall to my memory the most singular or
interesting facts; as, for instance--attempt to assassinate the King; he
orders Madame de Pompadour to leave the Court; M. de Machaudt’s
ingratitude, etc.--I always promised my friend that I would, some time or
other, reduce all these materials into the form of a regular narrative.
She mentioned the “Recollections of Madame de Caylus,” which were,
however, not then printed; and pressed me so much to produce a similar
work, that I have taken advantage of a few leisure moments to write this,
which I intend to give her, in order that she may arrange it and correct
the style.  I was for a long time about the person of Madame de
Pompadour, and my birth procured for me respectful treatment from
herself, and from some distinguished persons who conceived a regard for
me.  I soon became the intimate friend of Doctor Quesnay, who frequently
came to pass two or three hours with me.

His house was frequented by people of all parties, but the number was
small, and restricted to those who were on terms of greatest intimacy
with him.  All subjects were handled with the utmost freedom, and it is
infinitely to his honour and theirs that nothing was ever repeated.

The Countess D----- also visited me.  She was a frank and lively woman,
and much liked by Madame de Pompadour.  The Baschi family paid me great
attention.  M. de Marigny had received some little services from me, in
the course of the frequent quarrels between him and his sister, and he
had a great friendship for me.  The King was in the constant habit of
seeing me; and an accident, which I shall have occasion to relate,
rendered him very familiar with me.  He talked without any constraint
when I was in the room.  During Madame de Pompadour’s illness I scarcely
ever left her chamber, and passed the night there.  Sometimes, though
rarely, I accompanied her in her carriage with Doctor Quesnay, to whom
she scarcely spoke a word, though he was--a man of great talents.  When I
was alone with her, she talked of many affairs which nearly concerned
her, and she once said to me, “The King and I have such implicit
confidence in you, that we look upon you as a cat, or a dog, and go on
talking as if you were not there.”  There was a little nook, adjoining
her chamber, which has since been altered, where she knew I usually sat
when I was alone, and where I heard everything that was said in the room,
unless it was spoken in a low voice.  But when the King wanted to speak
to her in private, or in the presence of any of his Ministers, he went
with her into a closet, by the side of the chamber, whither she also
retired when she had secret business with the Ministers, or with other
important persons; as, for instance, the Lieutenant of Police, the
Postmaster-General, etc.  All these circumstances brought to my knowledge
a great many things which probity will neither allow me to tell or to
record.  I generally wrote without order of time, so that a fact may be
related before others which preceded it.  Madame de Pompadour had a great
friendship for three Ministers; the first was M. de Machault, to whom she
was indebted for the regulation of her income, and the payment of her
debts.  She gave him the seals, and he retained the first place in her
regard till the attempt to assassinate the King.  Many people said that
his conduct on that occasion was not attributable to bad intentions; that
he thought it his duty to obey the King without making himself in any way
a party to the affair, and that his cold manners gave him the appearance
of an indifference which he did not feel.  Madame de Pompadour regarded
him in the light of a faithless friend; and, perhaps, there was some
justice on both sides.  But for the Abbe de Bernis; M. de Machault might,
probably, have retained his place.

The second Minister, whom Madame de Pompadour liked, was the Abbe de
Bernis.  She was soon disgusted with him when she saw the absurdity of
his conduct.  He gave a singular specimen of this on the very day of his
dismissal.  He had invited a great many people of distinction to a
splendid entertainment, which was to have taken place on the very day
when he received his order of banishment, and had written in the notes of
invitation--M. Le Comte de Lusace will be there.  This Count was the
brother of the Dauphine, and this mention of him was deservedly thought
impertinent.  The King said, wittily enough, “Lambert and Moliere will be
there.”  She scarcely ever spoke of the Cardinal de Bernis after his
dismissal from the Court.

He was extremely ridiculous, but he was a good sort of man.  Madame, the
Infanta, died a little time before, and, by the way, of such a
complication of putrid and malignant diseases, that the Capuchins who
bore the body, and the men who committed it to the grave, were overcome
by the effluvia.  Her papers appeared no less impure in the eyes of the
King.  He discovered that the Abbe de Bernis had been intriguing with
her, and that they had deceived him, and had obtained the Cardinal’s hat
by making use of his name.  The King was so indignant that he was very
near refusing him the barrette.  He did grant it--but just as he would
have thrown a bone to a dog.  The Abbe had always the air of a protege
when he was in the company of Madame de Pompadour.  She had known him in
positive distress.  The Due de Choiseul was very differently situated;
his birth, his air, his manners, gave him claims to consideration, and he
far exceeded every other man in the art of ingratiating himself with
Madame de Pompadour.  She looked upon him as one of the most illustrious
nobles of the Court, as the most able Minister, and the most agreeable
man.  M. de Choiseul had a sister and a wife, whom he had introduced to
her, and who sedulously cultivated her favourable sentiments towards him.
From the time he was Minister, she saw only with his eyes; he had the
talent of amusing her, and his manners to women, generally, were
extremely agreeable.

Two persons--the Lieutenant of Police and the Postmaster-General--were
very much in Madame de Pompadour’s confidence; the latter, however,
became less necessary to her from the time that the King communicated to
M. de Choiseul the secret of the post-office, that is to say, the system
of opening letters and extracting matter from them: this had never been
imparted to M. d’Argenson, in spite of the high favour he enjoyed. I have
heard that M. de Choiseul abused the confidence reposed in him, and
related to his friends the ludicrous stories, and the love affairs,
contained in the letters which were broken open.  The plan they pursued,
as I have heard, was very simple.  Six or seven clerks of the post-office
picked out the letters they were ordered to break open, and took the
impression of the seals with a ball of quicksilver.  Then they put each
letter, with the seal downwards, over a glass of hot water, which melted
the wax without injuring the paper.  It was then opened, the desired
matter extracted, and it was sealed again, by means of the impression.
This is the account of the matter I have heard.  The Postmaster-General
carried the extracts to the King on Sundays.  He was seen coming and
going on this noble errand as openly as the Ministers.  Doctor Quesnay
often, in my presence, flew in such a rage about that infamous Minister,
as he called him, that he foamed at the mouth.  “I would as soon dine
with the hangman as with the Postmaster-General,” said the Doctor.  It
must be acknowledged that this was astonishing language to be uttered in
the apartments of the King’s mistress; yet it went on for twenty years
without being talked of.  “It was probity speaking with earnestness,”
 said M. de Marigny, “and not a mere burst of spite or malignity.”

The Duc de Gontaut was the brother-in-law and friend of M. de Choiseul,
and was assiduous in his attendance on Madame de Pompadour.  The sister
of M. de Choiseul, Madame de Grammont, and his wife were equally constant
in their attentions.  This will sufficiently account for the ascendency
of M. de Choiseul, whom nobody would have ventured to attack.  Chance,
however, discovered to me a secret correspondence of the King, with a man
in a very obscure station.  This man, who had a place in the Farmers
General, of from two to three hundred a year, was related to one of the
young ladies of the Parc-aux-cerfs, by whom he was recommended to the
King.  He was also connected in some way with M. de Broglie, in whom the
King placed great confidence.  Wearied with finding that this
correspondence procured him no advancement, he took the resolution of
writing to me, and requesting an interview, which I granted, after
acquainting Madame de Pompadour with the circumstance.  After a great
deal of preamble and of flattery, he said to me, “Can you give me your
word of honour, and that of Madame de Pompadour, that no mention whatever
of what I am going to tell you will be made to the King?”--“I think I can
assure you that, if you require such a promise from Madame de Pompadour,
and if it can produce no ill consequence to the King’s service, she will
give it you.”  He gave me his word that what he requested would have no
bad effect; upon which I listened to what he had to say.  He shewed me
several memorials, containing accusations of M. de Choiseul, and revealed
some curious circumstances relative to the secret functions of the Comte
de Broglie.  These, however, led rather to conjectures than to certainty,
as to the nature of the services he rendered to the King.  Lastly, he
shewed me several letters in the King’s handwriting.  “I request,” said
he, “that the Marquise de Pompadour will procure for me the place of
Receiver-General of Finances; I will give her information of whatever I
send the King; I will write according to her instructions, and I will
send her his answers.”  As I did not choose to take liberties with the
King’s papers, I only undertook to deliver the memorials.  Madame de
Pompadour having given me her word according to the conditions on which I
had received the communication, I revealed to her everything I had heard.
She sent the memorials to M. de Choiseul, who thought them very
maliciously and very cleverly written.  Madame de Pompadour and he had a
long conference as to the reply that was to be given to the person by
whom those disclosures were made.  What I was commissioned to say was
this: that the place of Receiver-General was at present too important,
and would occasion too much surprise and speculation; that it would not
do to go beyond a place worth fifteen thousand to twenty thousand francs
a year; that they had no desire to pry into the King’s secrets; and that
his correspondence ought not to be communicated to any one; that this did
not apply to papers like those of which I was the bearer, which might
fall into his hands; that he would confer an obligation by communicating
them, in order that blows aimed in the dark, and directed by malignity
and imposture, might be parried.  The answer was respectful and proper,
in what related to the King; it was, however, calculated to counteract
the schemes of the Comte de Broglie, by making M. de Choiseul acquainted
with his attacks, and with the nature of the weapons he employed.  It was
from the Count that he received statements relating to the war and to the
navy; but he had no communication with him concerning foreign affairs,
which the Count, as it was said, transacted immediately with the King.
The Duc de Choiseul got the man who spoke to me recommended to the
Controller-General, without his appearing in the business; he had the
place which was agreed upon, and the hope of a still better, and he
entrusted to me the King’s correspondence, which I told him I should not
mention to Madame de Pompadour, according to her injunctions.  He sent
several memorials to M. de Choiseul, containing accusations of him,
addressed to the King.  This timely information enabled him to refute
them triumphantly.

The King was very fond of having little private correspondences, very
often unknown to Madame de Pompadour: she knew, however, of the existence
of some, for he passed part of his mornings in writing to his family, to
the King of Spain, to Cardinal Tencin, to the Abbe de Broglie, and also
to some obscure persons.  “It is, doubtless, from such people as these,”
 said she to me, one day, “that the King learns expressions which
perfectly surprise me.  For instance, he said to me yesterday, when he
saw a man pass with an old coat on, ‘il y a la un habit bien examine.’ He
once said to me, when he meant to express that a thing was probable, ‘il
y a gros’; I am told this is a saying of the common people, meaning, ‘il
y a gros a parier’.”  I took the liberty to say, “But is it not more
likely from his young ladies at the Parc, that he learns these elegant
expressions?”  She laughed, and said, “You are right; ‘il y a gros’.” The
King, however, used these expressions designedly, and with a laugh.

The King knew a great many anecdotes, and there were people enough who
furnished him with such as were likely to mortify the self-love of
others.  One day, at Choisy, he went into a room where some people were
employed about embroidered furniture, to see how they were going on; and
looking out of the window, he saw at the end of a long avenue two men in
the Choisy uniform.  “Who are those two noblemen?” said he.  Madame de
Pompadour took up her glass, and said, “They are the Duc d’Aumont, and
------”   “Ah!” said the King; “the Duc d’Aumont’s grandfather would be
greatly astonished if he could see his grandson arm in arm with the
grandson of his valet de chambre, L------, in a dress which may be called
a patent of nobility!”  He went on to tell Madame de Pompadour a long
history, to prove the truth of what he said.  The King went out to
accompany her into the garden; and, soon after, Quesnay and M. de Marigny
came in.  I spoke with contempt of some one who was very fond of money.
At this the Doctor laughed, and said, “I had a curious dream last night:
I was in the country of the ancient Germans; I had a large house, stacks
of corn, herds of cattle, a great number of horses, and huge barrels of
ale; but I suffered dreadfully from rheumatism, and knew not how to
manage to go to a fountain, at fifty leagues’ distance, the waters of
which would cure me.  I was to go among a strange people.  An enchanter
appeared before me, and said to me, ‘I pity your distress; here, I will
give you a little packet of the powder of “prelinpinpin”; whoever
receives a little of this from you will lodge you, feed you, and pay you
all sorts of civilities.’  I took the powder, and thanked him.” “Ah!”
 said I, “how I should like to have some powder of prelinpinpin!  I wish I
had a chest full.”--“Well,” said the Doctor, “that powder is money, for
which you have so great a contempt.  Tell me who, of all the men who come
hither, receives the greatest attentions?”--“I do not know,” said I.
“Why,” said he, “it is M. de Monmartel, who comes four or five times a
year.”--“Why does he enjoy so much consideration?”--“Because his coffers
are full of the powder of prelinpinpin.  Everything in existence,” said
he, taking a handful of Louis from his pocket, “is contained in these
little pieces of metal, which will convey you commodiously from one end
of the world to the other.  All men obey those who possess this powder,
and eagerly tender them their services.  To despise money, is to despise
happiness, liberty, in short, enjoyments of every kind.”  A cordon bleu
passed under the window.  “That nobleman,” said I, “is much more
delighted with his cordon bleu than he would be with ten thousand of your
pieces of metal.”--“When I ask the King for a pension,” replied Quesnay,
“I say to him, ‘Give me the means of having a better dinner, a warmer
coat, a carriage to shelter me from the weather, and to transport me from
place to place without fatigue.’  But the man who asks him for that fine
blue ribbon would say, if he had the courage and the honesty to speak as
he feels, ‘I am vain, and it will give me great satisfaction to see
people look at me, as I pass, with an eye of stupid admiration, and make
way, for me; I wish, when I enter a room, to produce an effect, and to
excite the attention of those who may, perhaps, laugh at me when I am
gone; I wish to be called Monseigneur by the multitude.’  Is not all this
mere empty air?  In scarcely any country will this ribbon be of the
slightest use to him; it will give him no power.  My pieces of metal will
give me the power of assisting the unfortunate everywhere.  Long live the
omnipotent powder of prelinpinpin!”  At these last words, we heard a
burst of laughter from the adjoining room, which was only separated by a
door from the one we were in.  The door opened, and in came the King,
Madame de Pompadour, and M. de Gontaut.  “Long live the powder of
prelinpinpin!” said the King. “Doctor, can you get me any of it?”  It
happened that, when the King returned from his walk, he was struck with a
fancy to listen to our conversation.  Madame de Pompadour was extremely
kind to the Doctor, and the King went out laughing, and talking with
great admiration of the powder.  I went away, and so did the Doctor.  I
immediately sat down to commit this conversation to writing.  I was
afterwards told that M. Quesnay was very learned in certain matters
relating to finance, and that he was a great ‘economiste’.  But I do not
know very well what that means.  What I do know for certain is, that he
was very clever, very gay and witty, and a very able physician.

The illness of the little Duke of Burgundy, whose intelligence was much
talked of, for a long time occupied the attention of the Court.  Great
endeavours were made to find out the cause of his malady, and ill-nature
went so far as to assert that his nurse, who had an excellent situation
at Versailles, had communicated to him a nasty disease.  The King shewed
Madame de Pompadour the information he had procured from the province she
came from, as to her conduct.  A silly Bishop thought proper to say she
had been very licentious in her youth.  The poor nurse was told of this,
and begged that he might be made to explain himself.  The Bishop replied,
that she had been at several balls in the town in which she lived, and
that she had gone with her neck uncovered.  The poor man actually thought
this the height of licentiousness.  The King, who had been at first
uneasy, when he came to this, called out, “What a fool!”  After having
long been a source of anxiety to the Court, the Duke died.  Nothing
produces a stronger impression upon Princes, than the spectacle of their
equals dying.  Everybody is occupied about them while ill--but as soon as
they are dead, nobody mentions them.  The King frequently talked about
death--and about funerals, and places of burial.  Nobody could be of a
more melancholy temperament.  Madame de Pompadour once told me that he
experienced a painful sensation whenever he was forced to laugh, and that
he had often begged her to break off a droll story.  He smiled, and that
was all.  In general, he had the most gloomy ideas concerning almost all
events.  When there was a new Minister, he used to say, “He displays his
wares like all the rest, and promises the finest things in the world, not
one of which will be fulfilled.  He does not know this country--he will
see.”  When new projects for reinforcing the navy were laid before him,
he said, “This is the twentieth time I have heard this talked of--France
never will have a navy, I think.”  This I heard from M. de Marigny.

I never saw Madame de Pompadour so rejoiced as at the taking of Mahon.
The King was very glad, too, but he had no belief in the merit of his
courtiers--he looked upon their success as the effect of chance. Marechal
Saxe was, as I have been told, the only man who inspired him with great
esteem.  But he had scarcely ever seen him in his closet, or playing the
courtier.

M. d’Argenson picked a quarrel with M. de Richelieu, after his victory,
about his return to Paris.  This was intended to prevent his coming to
enjoy his triumph.  He tried to throw the thing upon Madame de Pompadour,
who was enthusiastic about him, and called him by no other name than the
“Minorcan.”  The Chevalier de Montaign was the favourite of the Dauphin,
and much beloved by him for his great devotion.  He fell ill, and
underwent an operation called ‘l’empieme’, which is performed by making
an incision between the ribs, in order to let out the pus; it had, to all
appearance, a favourable result, but the patient grew worse, and could
not breathe.  His medical attendants could not conceive what occasioned
this accident and retarded his cure.  He died almost in the arms of the
Dauphin, who went every day to see him.  The singularity of his disease
determined the surgeons to open the body, and they found, in his chest,
part of the leaden syringe with which decoctions had, as was usual, been
injected into the part in a state of suppuration.  The surgeon, who
committed this act of negligence, took care not to boast of his feat, and
his patient was the victim.  This incident was much talked of by the
King, who related it, I believe, not less than thirty times, according to
his custom; but what occasioned still more conversation about the
Chevalier de Montaign, was a box, found by his bed’s side, containing
haircloths, and shirts, and whips, stained with blood.  This circumstance
was spoken of one evening at supper, at Madame de Pompadour’s, and not
one of the guests seemed at all tempted to imitate the Chevalier.  Eight
or ten days afterwards, the following tale was sent to the King, to
Madame de Pompadour, to the Baschi, and to the Duc d’Ayen.  At first
nobody could understand to what it referred: at last, the Duc d’Ayen
exclaimed, “How stupid we are; this is a joke on the austerities of the
Chevalier de Montaign!”  This appeared clear enough--so much the more so,
as the copies were sent to the Dauphin, the Dauphine, the Abbe de St.
Cyr, and to the Duc de V---.  The latter had the character of a pretender
to devotion, and, in his copy, there was this addition, “You would not be
such a fool, my dear Duke, as to be a ‘faquir’--confess that you would be
very glad to be one of those good monks who lead such a jolly life.” The
Duc de Richelieu was suspected of having employed one of his wits to
write the story.  The King was scandalised at it, and ordered the
Lieutenant of Police to endeavour to find out the author, but either he
could not succeed or he would not betray him.

Japanese Tale.

At a distance of three leagues from the capital of Japan, there is a
temple celebrated for the concourse of persons, of both sexes, and of all
ranks, who crowd thither to worship an idol believed to work miracles.
Three hundred men consecrated to the service of religion, and who can
give proofs of ancient and illustrious descent, serve this temple, and
present to the idol the offerings which are brought from all the
provinces of the empire.  They inhabit a vast and magnificent edifice,
belonging to the temple, and surrounded with gardens where art has
combined with nature to produce enchantment.  I obtained permission to
see the temple, and to walk in the gardens.  A monk advanced in years,
but still full of vigour and vivacity, accompanied me.  I saw several
others, of different ages, who were walking there.  But what surprised me
was to see a great many of them amusing themselves by various agreeable
and sportive games with young girls elegantly dressed, listening to their
songs, and joining in their dances.  The monk, who accompanied me,
listened with great civility and kindness to the questions I put to him
concerning his order.  The following is the sum of his answers to my
numerous interrogations.  The God Faraki, whom we worship, is so called
from a word which signifies the fabricator.  He made all that we
behold--the earth, the stars, the sun, etc.  He has endowed men with
senses, which are so many sources of pleasure, and we think the only way
of shewing our gratitude is to use them.  This opinion will, doubtless,
appear to you much more rational than that of the faquirs of India, who
pass their lives in thwarting nature, and who inflict upon themselves the
most melancholy privations and the most severe sufferings.

As soon as the sun rises, we repair to the mountain you see before us, at
the foot of which flows a stream of the most limpid water, which meanders
in graceful windings through that meadow-enamelled with the loveliest
flowers.  We gather the most fragrant of them, which we carry and lay
upon the altar, together with various fruits, which we receive from the
bounty of Faraki.  We then sing his praises, and execute dances
expressive of our thankfulness, and of all the enjoyments we owe to this
beneficent deity.  The highest of these is that which love produces, and
we testify our ardent gratitude by the manner in which we avail ourselves
of this inestimable gift of Faraki.  Having left the temple, we go into
several shady thickets, where we take a light repast; after which, each
of us employs himself in some unoppressive labour.  Some embroider,
others apply themselves to painting, others cultivate flowers or fruits,
others turn little implements for our use.  Many of these little works
are sold to the people, who purchase them with eagerness.  The money
arising from this sale forms a considerable part of our revenue.  Our
morning is thus devoted to the worship of God and to the exercise of the
sense of Sight, which begins with the first rays of the sun.  The sense
of Taste is gratified by our dinner, and we add to it the pleasure of
Smell.  The most delicious viands are spread for us in apartments strewed
with flowers.  The table is adorned with them, and the most exquisite
wines are handed to us in crystal goblets.  When we have glorified God,
by the agreeable use of the palate, and the olfactory nerve, we enjoy a
delightful sleep of two hours, in bowers of orange trees, roses, and
myrtles.  Having acquired a fresh store of strength and spirits, we
return to our occupations, that we may thus mingle labour with pleasure,
which would lose its zest by long continuance.  After our work, we return
to the temple, to thank God, and to offer him incense.  From thence we go
to the most delightful part of the garden, where we find three hundred
young girls, some of whom form lively dances with the younger of our
monks; the others execute serious dances, which require neither strength
nor agility, and which only keep time to the sound of musical
instruments.

We talk and laugh with our companions, who are dressed in a light gauze,
and whose tresses are adorned with flowers; we press them to partake of
exquisite sherbets, differently prepared.  The hour of supper being
arrived, we repair to rooms illuminated with the lustre of a thousand
tapers fragrant with amber.  The supper-room is surrounded by three vast
galleries, in which are placed musicians, whose various instruments fill
the mind with the most pleasurable and the softest emotions.  The young
girls are seated at table with us, and, towards the conclusion of the
repast, they sing songs, which are hymns in honour of the God who has
endowed us with senses which shed such a charm over existence, and which
promise us new pleasure from every fresh exercise of them.  After the
repast is ended, we return to the dance, and, when the hour of repose
arrives, we draw from a kind of lottery, in which every one is sure of a
prize; that is, a young girl as his companion for the night.  They are
allotted thus by chance, in order to avoid jealousy, and to prevent
exclusive attachments.  Thus ends the day, and gives place to a night of
delights, which we sanctify by enjoying with due relish that sweetest of
all pleasures, which Faraki has so wisely attached to the reproduction of
our species.  We reverently admire the wisdom and the goodness of Faraki,
who, desiring to secure to the world a continued population, has
implanted in the sexes an invincible mutual attraction, which constantly
draws them towards each other.  Fecundity is the end he proposes, and he
rewards with intoxicating delights those who contribute to the fulfilment
of his designs.  What should we say to the favourite of a King from whom
he had received a beautiful house, and fine estates, and who chose to
spoil the house, to let it fall in ruins, to abandon the cultivation of
the land, and let it become sterile, and covered with thorns?  Such is
the conduct of the faquirs of India, who condemn themselves to the most
melancholy privations, and to the most severe sufferings.  Is not this
insulting Faraki?  Is it not saying to him, I despise your gifts?  Is it
not misrepresenting him and saying, You are malevolent and cruel, and I
know that I can no otherwise please you than by offering you the
spectacle of my miseries?  “I am told,” added he, “that you have, in your
country, faquirs not less insane, not less cruel to themselves.” I
thought, with some reason, that he meant the fathers of La Trappe. The
recital of the matter afforded me much matter for reflection, and I
admired how strange are the systems to which perverted reason gives
birth.

The Duc de V----- was a nobleman of high rank and great wealth.  He said
to the King one evening at supper, “Your Majesty does me the favour to
treat me with great kindness: I should be inconsolable if I had the
misfortune to fall under your displeasure.  If such a calamity were to
befall me, I should endeavour to divert my grief by improving some
beautiful estates of mine in such and such a province;” and he thereupon
gave a description of three or four fine seats.  About a month after,
talking of the disgrace of a Minister, he said, “I hope your Majesty will
not withdraw your favour from me; but if I had the misfortune to lose it,
I should be more to be pitied than anybody, for I have no asylum in which
to hide my head.”  All those present, who had heard the description of
the beautiful country houses, looked at each other and laughed.  The King
said to Madame de Pompadour, who sat next to him at table, “People are
very right in saying that a liar ought to have a good memory.”

An event, which made me tremble, as well as Madame, procured me the
familiarity of the King.  In the middle of the night, Madame came into my
chamber, en chemise, and in a state of distraction.  “Here! Here!” said
she, “the King is dying.”  My alarm may be easily imagined.  I put on a
petticoat, and found the King in her bed, panting.  What was to be
done?--it was an indigestion.  We threw water upon him, and he came to
himself.  I made him swallow some Hoffman’s drops, and he said to me, “Do
not make any noise, but go to Quesnay; say that your mistress is ill; and
tell the Doctor’s servants to say nothing about it.”  Quesnay, who lodged
close by, came immediately, and was much astonished to see the King in
that state.  He felt his pulse, and said, “The crisis is over; but, if
the King were sixty years old, this might have been serious.” He went to
seek some drug, and, on his return, set about inundating the King with
perfumed water.  I forget the name of the medicine he made him take, but
the effect was wonderful.  I believe it was the drops of General Lamotte.
I called up one of the girls of the wardrobe to make tea, as if for
myself.  The King took three cups, put on his robe de chambre and his
stockings, and went to his own room, leaning upon the Doctor.  What a
sight it was to see us all three half naked!  Madame put on a robe as
soon as possible, and I did the same, and the King changed his clothes
behind the curtains, which were very decently closed.  He afterwards
spoke of this short attack, and expressed his sense of the attentions
shown him.  An hour after, I felt the greatest possible terror in
thinking that the King might have died in our hands.  Happily, he quickly
recovered himself, and none of the domestics perceived what had taken
place.  I merely told the girl of the wardrobe to put everything to
rights, and she thought it was Madame who had been indisposed.  The King,
the next morning, gave secretly to Quesnay a little note for Madame, in
which he said, ‘Ma chere amie’ must have had a great fright, but let her
reassure herself--I am now well, which the Doctor will certify to you.
From that moment the King became accustomed to me, and, touched by the
interest I had shown for him, he often gave me one of his peculiarly
gracious glances, and made me little presents, and, on every New Year’s
Day, sent me porcelain to the amount of twenty louis d’or.  He told
Madame that he looked upon me in the apartment as a picture or statue,
and never put any constraint upon himself on account of my presence.
Doctor Quesnay received a pension of a thousand crowns for his attention
and silence, and the promise of a place for his son.  The King gave me an
order upon the Treasury for four thousand francs, and Madame had
presented to her a very handsome chiming-clock and the King’s portrait in
a snuffbox.

The King was habitually melancholy, and liked everything which recalled
the idea of death, in spite of the strongest fears of it.  Of this, the
following is an instance: Madame de Pompadour was on her way to Crecy,
when one of the King’s grooms made a sign to her coachman to stop, and
told him that the King’s carriage had broken down, and that, knowing her
to be at no great distance, His Majesty had sent him forward to beg her
to wait for him.  He soon overtook us, and seated himself in Madame de
Pompadour’s carriage, in which were, I think, Madame de Chateau-Renaud,
and Madame de Mirepoix.  The lords in attendance placed themselves in
some other carriages.  I was behind, in a chaise, with Gourbillon, Madame
de Pompadour’s valet de chambre.  We were surprised in a short time by
the King stopping his carriage.  Those which followed, of course stopped
also.  The King called a groom, and said to him, “You see that little
eminence; there are crosses; it must certainly be a burying-ground; go
and see whether there are any graves newly dug.”  The groom galloped up
to it, returned, and said to the King, “There are three quite freshly
made.”  Madame de Pompadour, as she told me, turned away her head with
horror; and the little Marechale gaily said, “This is indeed enough to
make one’s mouth water.”

[The Marechale de Mirepois died at Brussels in 1791, at a very advanced
age, but preserving her wit and gaiety to the last.  The day of her
death, after she had received the Sacrament, the physician told her that
he thought her a good deal better.  She replied, “You tell me bad news:
having packed up, I had rather go.” She was sister of the Prince de
Beauveau.  The Prince de Ligne says, in one of his printed letters: “She
had that enchanting talent which supplies the means of pleasing
everybody.  You would have sworn that she had thought of nothing but you
all her life.”--En.]

Madame de Pompadour spoke of it when I was undressing her in the
evening.  “What a strange pleasure,” said she, “to endeavour to fill
one’s mind with images which one ought to endeavour to banish,
especially when one is surrounded by so many sources of happiness!  But
that is the King’s way; he loves to talk about death.  He said, some
days ago, to M. de Fontanieu, who was, seized with a bleeding at the
nose, at the levee: ‘Take care of yourself; at your age it is a
forerunner of apoplexy.’  The poor man went home frightened, and
absolutely ill.”

I never saw the King so agitated as during the illness of the Dauphin.
The physicians came incessantly to the apartments of Madame de Pompadour,
where the King interrogated them.  There was one from Paris, a very odd
man, called Pousse, who once said to him, “You are a good papa; I like
you for that.  But you know we are all your children, and share your
distress.  Take courage, however; your son will recover.”  Everybody’s
eyes were upon the Duc d’Orleans, who knew not how to look.  He would
have become heir to the crown, the Queen being past the age to have
children.  Madame de ----- said to me, one day, when I was expressing my
surprise at the King’s grief, “It would annoy him beyond measure to have
a Prince of the blood heir apparent.  He does not like them, and looks
upon their relationship to him as so remote, that he would feel
humiliated by it.”  And, in fact, when his son recovered, he said, “The
King of Spain would have had a fine chance.”  It was thought that he was
right in this, and that it would have been agreeable to justice; but
that, if the Duc d’Orleans had been supported by a party, he might have
supported his pretensions to the crown.  It was, doubtless, to remove
this impression that he gave a magnificent fete at St. Cloud on the
occasion of the Dauphin’s recovery.  Madame de Pompadour said to Madame
de Brancas, speaking of this fete, “He wishes to make us forget the
chateau en Espagne he has been dreaming of; in Spain, however, they build
them of solider materials.”  The people did not shew so much joy at the
Dauphin’s recovery.  They looked upon him as a devotee, who did nothing
but sing psalms.  They loved the Duc d’Orleans, who lived in the capital,
and had acquired the name of the King of Paris.  These sentiments were
not just; the Dauphin only sang psalms when imitating the tones of one of
the choristers of the chapel.  The people afterwards acknowledged their
error, and did justice to his virtues.  The Duc d’Orleans paid the most
assiduous court to Madame de Pompadour: the Duchess, on the contrary,
detested her.  It is possible that words were put into the Duchess’s
mouth which she never uttered; but she, certainly, often said most
cutting things.  The King would have sent her into exile, had he listened
only to his resentment; but he feared the eclat of such a proceeding, and
he knew that she would only be the more malicious.  The Duc d’Orleans
was, just then, extremely jealous of the Comte de Melfort; and the
Lieutenant of Police told the King he had strong reasons for believing
that the Duke would stick at nothing to rid himself of this gallant, and
that he thought it his duty to give the Count notice, that he ought to be
upon his guard.  The King said, “He would not dare to attempt any such
violence as you seem to apprehend; but there is a better way: let him try
to surprise them, and he will find me very well inclined to have his
cursed wife shut up; but if he got rid of this lover, she would have
another to-morrow.

“Nay, she has others at this moment; for instance, the Chevalier de
Colbert, and the Comte de l’Aigle.”  Madame de Pompadour, however, told
me these two last affairs were not certain.

An adventure happened about the same time, which the Lieutenant of Police
reported to the King.  The Duchesse d’Orleans had amused herself one
evening, about eight o’clock, with ogling a handsome young Dutchman, whom
she took a fancy to, from a window of the Palais Royal.  The young man,
taking her for a woman of the town, wanted to make short work, at which
she was very much shocked.  She called a Swiss, and made herself known.
The stranger was arrested; but he defended himself by affirming that she
had talked very loosely to him.  He was dismissed, and the Duc d’Orleans
gave his wife a severe reprimand.

The King (who hated her so much that he spoke of her without the
slightest restraint) one day said to Madame de Pompadour, in my presence,
“Her mother knew what she was, for, before her marriage, she never
suffered her to say more than yes and no.  Do you know her joke on the
nomination of Moras?  She sent to congratulate him upon it: two minutes
after, she called back the messenger she had sent, and said, before
everybody present, ‘Before you speak to him, ask the Swiss if he still
has the place.’”  Madame de Pompadour was not vindictive, and, in spite
of the malicious speeches of the Duchesse d’Orleans, she tried to excuse
her conduct.  “Almost all women,” she said, “have lovers; she has not all
that are imputed to her: but her free manners, and her conversation,
which is beyond all bounds, have brought her into general disrepute.”

My companion came into my room the other day, quite delighted.  She had
been with M. de Chenevieres, first Clerk in the War-office, and a
constant correspondent of Voltaire, whom she looks upon as a god.  She
was, by the bye, put into a great rage one day, lately, by a print-seller
in the street, who was crying, “Here is Voltaire, the famous Prussian;
here you see him, with a great bear-skin cap, to keep him from the cold!
Here is the famous Prussian, for six sous!”--“What a profanation!” said
she.  To return to my story: M. de Chenevieres had shewn her some letters
from Voltaire, and M. Marmontel had read an ‘Epistle to his Library’.

M. Quesnay came in for a moment; she told him all this: and, as he did
not appear to take any great interest in it, she asked him if he did not
admire great poets.  “Oh, yes; just as I admire great bilboquet players,”
 said he, in that tone of his, which rendered everything he said
diverting.  “I have written some verses, however,” said he, “and I will
repeat them to you; they are upon a certain M. Rodot, an Intendant of the
Marine, who was very fond of abusing medicine and medical men.  I made
these verses to revenge AEsculapius and Hippocrates.

“What do you say to them?” said the Doctor.  My companion thought them
very pretty, and the Doctor gave me them in his handwriting, begging me,
at the same time, not to give any copies.

Madame de Pompadour joked my companion about her ‘bel-esprit’, but
sometimes she reposed confidence in her.  Knowing that she was often
writing, she said to her, “You are writing a novel, which will appear
some day or other; or, perhaps, the age of Louis XV.: I beg you to treat
me well.”  I have no reason to complain of her.  It signifies very little
to me that she can talk more learnedly than I can about prose and verse.

She never told me her real name; but one day I was malicious enough to
say to her, “Some one was maintaining, yesterday, that the family of
Madame de Mar---- was of more importance than many of good extraction.
They say it is the first in Cadiz.  She had very honourable alliances,
and yet she has thought it no degradation to be governess to Madame de
Pompadour’s daughter.  One day you will see her sons or her nephews
Farmers General, and her granddaughters married to Dukes.”  I had
remarked that Madame de Pompadour for some days had taken chocolate, ‘a
triple vanille et ambre’, at her breakfast; and that she ate truffles and
celery soup: finding her in a very heated state, I one day remonstrated
with her about her diet, to which she paid no attention. I then thought
it right to speak to her friend, the Duchesse de Brancas. “I had remarked
the same thing,” said she, “and I will speak to her about it before you.”
 After she was dressed, Madame de Brancas, accordingly, told her she was
uneasy about her health.  “I have just been talking to her about it,”
 said the Duchess, pointing to me, “and she is of my opinion.”  Madame de
Pompadour seemed a little displeased; at last, she burst into tears.  I
immediately went out, shut the door, and returned to my place to listen.
“My dear friend,” she said to Madame de Brancas, “I am agitated by the
fear of losing the King’s heart by ceasing to be attractive to him.  Men,
you know, set great value on certain things, and I have the misfortune to
be of a very cold temperament.  I, therefore, determined to adopt a
heating diet, in order to remedy this defect, and for two days this
elixir has been of great service to me, or, at least, I have thought I
felt its good effects.”

The Duchesse de Brancas took the phial which was upon the toilet, and
after having smelt at it, “Fie!” said she, and threw it into the fire.
Madame de Pompadour scolded her, and said, “I don’t like to be treated
like a child.”  She wept again, and said, “You don’t know what happened
to me a week ago.  The King, under pretext of the heat of the weather,
lay down upon my sofa, and passed half the night there.  He will take a
disgust to me and have another mistress.”--“You will not avoid that,”
 replied the Duchess, “by following your new diet, and that diet will kill
you; render your company more and more precious to the King by your
gentleness: do not repulse him in his fond moments, and let time do the
rest; the chains of habit will bind him to you for ever.”  They then
embraced; Madame de Pompadour recommended secrecy to Madame de Brancas,
and the diet was abandoned.

A little while after, she said to me, “Our master is better pleased with
me.  This is since I spoke to Quesnay, without, however, telling him all.
He told me, that to accomplish my end, I must try to be in good health,
to digest well, and, for that purpose, take exercise.  I think the Doctor
is right.  I feel quite a different creature.  I adore that man (the
King), I wish so earnestly to be agreeable to him!  But, alas!  sometimes
he says I am a macreuse (a cold-blooded aquatic bird).  I would give my
life to please him.”





One day, the King came in very much heated.  I withdrew to my post, where
I listened.  “What is the matter?” said Madame de Pompadour.  “The long
robes and the clergy,” replied he, “are always at drawn daggers, they
distract me by their quarrels.  But I detest the long robes the most. My
clergy, on the whole, is attached and faithful to me; the others want to
keep me in a state of tutelage.”--“Firmness,” said Madame de Pompadour,
“is the only thing that can subdue them.”--“Robert Saint Vincent is an
incendiary, whom I wish I could banish, but that would make a terrible
tumult.  On the other hand, the Archbishop is an iron-hearted fellow, who
tries to pick quarrels.  Happily, there are some in the Parliament upon
whom I can rely, and who affect to be very violent, but can be softened
upon occasion.  It costs me a few abbeys, and a few secret pensions, to
accomplish this.  There is a certain V--- who serves me very well, while
he appears to be furious on the other side.”--“I can tell you some news
of him, Sire,” said Madame de Pompadour.  “He wrote to me yesterday,
pretending that he is related to me, and begging for an
interview.”--“Well,” said the King, “let him come.  See him; and if he
behaves well, we shall have a pretext for giving him something.”  M. de
Gontaut came in, and seeing that they were talking seriously, said
nothing.  The King walked about in an agitated manner, and suddenly
exclaimed, “The Regent was very wrong in restoring to them the right of
remonstrating; they will end in ruining the State.”--“All, Sire,” said M.
de Gontaut, “it is too strong to be shaken by a set of petty justices.”
 “You don’t know what they do, nor what they think.  They are an assembly
of republicans; however, here is enough of the subject.  Things will last
as they are as long as I shall.  Talk about this on Sunday, Madame, with
M. Berrien.”  Madame d’Amblimont and Madame d’Esparbes came in. “Ah! here
come my kittens,” said Madame de Pompadour; “all that we are about is
Greek to them; but their gaiety restores my tranquility, and enables me
to attend again to serious affairs.  You, Sire, have the chase to divert
you--they answer the same purpose to me.”  The King then began to talk
about his morning’s sport, and Lansmatte.

[See the “Memoirs of Madame Campan,” vol. iii., p. 24.  Many traits of
original and amusing bluntness are related of Lansmatte, one of the
King’s grooms.]

It was necessary to let the King go on upon these subjects, and even,
sometimes, to hear the same story three or four times over, if new
persons came into the room.  Madame de Pompadour never betrayed the least
ennui.  She even sometimes persuaded him to begin his story anew.

I one day said to her, “It appears to me, Madame, that you are fonder
than ever of the Comtesse d’Amblimont.”--“I have reason to be so,” said
she.  “She is unique, I think, for her fidelity to her friends, and for
her honour.  Listen, but tell nobody--four days ago, the King, passing
her to go to supper, approached her, under the pretence of tickling her,
and tried to slip a note into her hand.  D’Amblimont, in her madcap way,
put her hands behind her back, and the King was obliged to pick up the
note, which had fallen on the ground.  Gontaut was the only person who
saw all this, and, after supper, he went up to the little lady, and said,
‘You are an excellent friend.’--‘I did my duty,’ said she, and
immediately put her finger on her lips to enjoin him to be silent. He,
however, informed me of this act of friendship of the little heroine, who
had not told me of it herself.”  I admired the Countess’s virtue, and
Madame de Pompadour said, “She is giddy and headlong; but she has more
sense and more feeling than a thousand prudes and devotees.  D’Esparbes
would not do as much most likely she would meet him more than half-way.
The King appeared disconcerted, but he still pays her great
attentions.”--“You will, doubtless, Madame,” said I, “show your sense of
such admirable conduct.”--“You need not doubt it,” said she, “but I don’t
wish her to think that I am informed of it.”  The King, prompted either
by the remains of his liking, or from the suggestions of Madame de
Pompadour, one morning went to call on Madame d’Amblimont, at Choisy, and
threw round her neck a collar of diamonds and emeralds, worth between
fifty thousand and seventy-five thousand francs.  This happened a long
time after the circumstance I have just related.

There was a large sofa in a little room adjoining Madame de Pompadour’s,
upon which I often reposed.

One evening, towards midnight, a bat flew into the apartment where the
Court was; the King immediately cried out, “Where is General Crillon?”
 (He had just left the room.) “He is the General to command against the
bats.”  This set everybody calling out, “Ou etais tu, Crillon?”  M. de
Crillon soon after came in, and was told where the enemy was.  He
immediately threw off his coat, drew his sword, and commenced an attack
upon the bat, which flew into the closet where I was fast asleep.  I
started out of sleep at the noise, and saw the King and all the company
around me.  This furnished amusement for the rest of the evening.  M. de
Crillon was a very excellent and agreeable man, but he had the fault of
indulging in buffooneries of this kind, which, however, were the result
of his natural gaiety, and not of any subserviency of character.  Such,
however, was not the case with another exalted nobleman, a Knight of the
Golden Fleece, whom Madame saw one day shaking hands with her valet de
chambre.  As he was one of the vainest men at Court, Madame could not
refrain from telling the circumstance to the King; and, as he had no
employment at Court, the King scarcely ever after named him on the Supper
List.

I had a cousin at Saint Cyr, who was married.  She was greatly distressed
at having a relation waiting woman to Madame de Pompadour, and often
treated me in the most mortifying manner.  Madame knew this from Colin,
her steward, and spoke of it to the King.  “I am not surprised at it,”
 said he; “this is a specimen of the silly women of Saint Cyr.  Madame de
Maintenon had excellent intentions, but she made a great mistake.  These
girls are brought up in such a manner, that, unless they are all made
ladies of the palace, they are unhappy and impertinent.”

Some time after, this relation of mine was at my house.  Colin, who knew
her, though she did not know him, came in.  He said to me, “Do you know
that the Prince de Chimay has made a violent attack upon the Chevalier
d’Henin for being equerry to the Marquise.”  At these words, my cousin
looked very much astonished, and said, “Was he not right?”--“I don’t mean
to enter into that question,” said Colin--“but only to repeat his words,
which were these: ‘If you were only a man of moderately good family and
poor, I should not blame you, knowing, as I do, that there are hundreds
such, who would quarrel for your place, as young ladies of family would,
to be about your mistress.  But, recollect, that your relations are
princes of the Empire, and that you bear their name.”--“What, sir,” said
my relation, “the Marquise’s equerry of a princely house?”--“Of the house
of Chimay,” said he; “they take the name of Alsace “--witness the
Cardinal of that name.  Colin went out delighted at what he had said.

“I cannot get over my surprise at what I have heard,” said my relation.
“It is, nevertheless, very true,” replied I; “you may see the Chevalier
d’Henin (that is the family name of the Princes de Chimay), with the
cloak of Madame upon his arm, and walking alongside her sedan-chair, in
order that he may be ready, on her getting in, to cover her shoulders
with her cloak, and then remain in the antechamber, if there is no other
room, till her return.”

From that time, my cousin let me alone; nay, she even applied to me to
get a company of horse for her husband, who was very loath to come and
thank me.  His wife wished him to thank Madame de Pompadour; but the fear
he had lest she should tell him, that it was in consideration of his
relationship to her waiting-woman that he commanded fifty horse,
prevented him.  It was, however, a most surprising thing that a man
belonging to the house of Chimay should be in the service of any lady
whatever; and, the commander of Alsace returned from Malta on purpose to
get him out of Madame de Pompadour’s  household.  He got him a pension of
a hundred louis from his family, and the Marquise gave him a company of
horse.  The Chevalier d’Henin had been page to the Marechal de
Luxembourg, and one can hardly imagine how he could have put his relation
in such a situation; for, generally speaking, all great houses keep up
the consequence of their members.  M. de Machault, the Keeper of the
Seals, had, at the same time, as equerry, a Knight of St. Louis, and a
man of family--the Chevalier de Peribuse--who carried his portfolio, and
walked by the side of the chair.

Whether it was from ambition, or from tenderness, Madame de Pompadour had
a regard for her daughter,--[The daughter of Madame de Pompadour and her
husband, M. d’Atioles.  She was called Alexandrine.]--which seemed to
proceed from the bottom of her heart.  She was brought up like a
Princess, and, like persons of that rank, was called by her Christian
name alone.  The first persons at Court had an eye to this alliance, but
her mother had, perhaps, a better project.  The King had a son by Madame
de Vintimille, who resembled him in face, gesture, and manners.  He was
called the Comte du -----.  Madame de Pompadour had him brought: to
Bellevue.  Colin, her steward, was employed to find means to persuade his
tutor to bring him thither.  They took some refreshment at the house of
the Swiss, and the Marquise, in the course of her walk, appeared to meet
them by accident.  She asked the name of the child, and admired his
beauty.  Her daughter came up at the same moment, and Madame de Pompadour
led them into a part of the garden where she knew the King would come. He
did come, and asked the child’s name.  He was told, and looked
embarrassed when Madame, pointing to them, said they would be a beautiful
couple.  The King played with the girl, without appearing to take any
notice of the boy, who, while he was eating some figs and cakes which
were brought, his attitudes and gestures were so like those of the King,
that Madame de Pompadour was in the utmost astonishment. “Ah!” said she,
“Sire, look at --------.”  --“At what?”  said he.  “Nothing,” replied
Madame, “except that one would think one saw his father.”

“I did not know,” said the King, smiling, “that you were so intimately
acquainted with the Comte du L------ .”--“You ought to embrace him,” said
she, “he is very handsome.”--“I will begin, then, with the young lady,”
 said the King, and embraced them in a cold, constrained manner.  I was
present, having joined Mademoiselle’s governess.  I remarked to Madame,
in the evening, that the King had not appeared very cordial in his
caresses.  “That is his way,” said she; “but do not those children appear
made for each other?  If it was Louis XIV., he would make a Duc du Maine
of the little boy; I do not ask so much; but a place and a dukedom for
his son is very little; and it is because he is his son that I prefer him
to all the little Dukes of the Court.  My grandchildren would blend the
resemblance of their grandfather and grandmother; and this combination,
which I hope to live to see, would, one day, be my greatest delight.” The
tears came into her eyes as she spoke.  Alas! alas! only six months
elapsed, when her darling daughter, the hope of her advanced years, the
object of her fondest wishes, died suddenly.  Madame de Pompadour was
inconsolable, and I must do M. de Marigny the justice to say that he was
deeply afflicted.  His niece was beautiful as an angel, and destined to
the highest fortunes, and I always thought that he had formed the design
of marrying her.  A dukedom would have given him rank; and that, joined
to his place, and to the wealth which she would have had from her mother,
would have made him a man of great importance.  The difference of age was
not sufficient to be a great obstacle.  People, as usual, said the young
lady was poisoned; for the unexpected death of persons who command a
large portion of public attention always gives birth to these rumours.
The King shewed great regret, but more for the grief of Madame than on
account of the loss itself, though he had often caressed the child, and
loaded her with presents.  I owe it, also, to justice, to say that M. de
Marigny, the heir of all Madame de Pompadour’s fortune, after the death
of her daughter, evinced the sincerest and deepest regret every time she
was seriously ill.  She, soon after, began to lay plans for his
establishment.  Several young ladies of the highest birth were thought
of; and, perhaps, he would have been made a Duke, but his turn of mind
indisposed him for schemes either of marriage or ambition.  Ten times he
might have been made Prime Minister, yet he never aspired to it.  “That
is a man,” said Quesnay to me, one day, “who is very little known; nobody
talks of his talents or acquirements, nor of his zealous and efficient
patronage of the arts: no man, since Colbert, has done so much in his
situation: he is, moreover, an extremely honourable man, but people will
not see in him anything but the brother of the favourite; and, because he
is fat, he is thought dull and heavy.”  This was all perfectly true. M.
de Marigny had travelled in Italy with very able artists, and had
acquired taste, and much more information than any of his predecessors
had possessed.  As for the heaviness of his air, it only came upon him
when he grew fat; before that, he had a delightful face.  He was then as
handsome as his sister.  He paid court to nobody, had no vanity, and
confined himself to the society of persons with whom he was at his ease.
He went rather more into company at Court after the King had taken him to
ride with him in his carriage, thinking it then his duty to shew himself
among the courtiers.

Madame called me, one day, into her closet, where the King was walking up
and down in a very serious mood.  “You must,” said she, “pass some days
in a house in the Avenue de St. Cloud, whither I shall send you.  You
will there find a young lady about to lie in.”  The King said nothing,
and I was mute from astonishment.  “You will be mistress of the house,
and preside, like one of the fabulous goddesses, at the accouchement.
Your presence is necessary, in order that everything may pass secretly,
and according to the King’s wish.  You will be present at the baptism,
and name the father and mother.”  The King began to laugh, and said, “The
father is a very honest man;”  Madame added, “beloved by every one, and
adored by those who know him.”  Madame then took from a little cupboard a
small box, and drew from it an aigrette of diamonds, at the same time
saying to the King, “I have my reasons for it not being handsomer.”--“It
is but too much so,” said the King; “how kind you are;” and he then
embraced Madame, who wept with emotion, and, putting her hand upon the
King’s heart, said, “This is what I wish to secure.”  The King’s eyes
then filled with tears, and I also began weeping, without knowing why.
Afterwards, the King said, “Guimard will call upon you every day, to
assist you with his advice, and at the critical moment you will send for
him.  You will say that you expect the sponsors, and a moment after you
will pretend to have received a letter, stating that they cannot come.
You will, of course, affect to be very much embarrassed; and Guimard will
then say that there is nothing for it but to take the first comers.  You
will then appoint as godfather and godmother some beggar, or chairman,
and the servant girl of the house, and to whom you will give but twelve
francs, in order not to attract attention.”--“A louis,” added Madame, “to
obviate anything singular, on the other hand.”--“It is you who make me
economical, under certain circumstances,” said the King.  “Do you
remember the driver of the fiacre?  I wanted to give him a LOUIS, and Duc
d’Ayen said, ‘You will be known;’ so that I gave him a crown.”  He was
going to tell the whole story.  Madame made a sign to him to be silent,
which he obeyed, not without considerable reluctance.  She afterwards
told me that at the time of the fetes given on occasion of the Dauphin’s
marriage, the King came to see her at her mother’s house in a
hackney-coach.  The coachman would not go on, and the King would have
given him a LOUIS.  “The police will hear of it, if you do,” said the Duc
d’Ayen, “and its spies will make inquiries, which will, perhaps, lead to
a discovery.”

“Guimard,” continued the King, “will tell you the names of the father and
mother; he will be present at the ceremony, and make the usual presents.
It is but fair that you also should receive yours;” and, as he said this,
he gave me fifty LOUIS, with that gracious air that he could so well
assume upon certain occasions, and which no person in the kingdom had but
himself.  I kissed his hand and wept.  “You will take care of the
accouchee, will you not?  She is a good creature, who has not invented
gunpowder, and I confide her entirely to your direction; my chancellor
will tell you the rest,” he said, turning to Madame, and then quitted the
room.  “Well, what think you of the part I am playing?” asked Madame. “It
is that of a superior woman, and an excellent friend,” I replied. “It is
his heart I wish to secure,” said she; “and all those young girls who
have no education will not run away with it from me.  I should not be
equally confident were I to see some fine woman belonging to the Court,
or the city, attempt his conquest.”

I asked Madame, if the young lady knew that the King was the father of
her child?  “I do not think she does,” replied she; “but, as he appeared
fond of her, there is some reason to fear that those about her might be
too ready to tell her; otherwise,” said she, shrugging her shoulders,
“she, and all the others, are told that he is a Polish nobleman, a
relation of the Queen, who has apartments in the castle.”  This story was
contrived on account of the cordon bleu, which the King has not always
time to lay aside, because, to do that, he must change his coat, and in
order to account for his having a lodging in the castle so near the King.
There were two little rooms by the side of the chapel, whither the King
retired from his apartment, without being seen by anybody but a sentinel,
who had his orders, and who did not know who passed through those rooms.
The King sometimes went to the Parc-aux-cerfs, or received those young
ladies in the apartments I have mentioned.

I must here interrupt my narrative, to relate a singular adventure, which
is only known to six or seven persons, masters or valets.  At the time of
the attempt to assassinate the King, a young girl, whom he had seen
several times, and for whom he had manifested more tenderness than for
most, was distracted at this horrible event.  The Mother-Abbess of the
Parc-aux-cerfs perceived her extraordinary grief, and managed so as to
make her confess that she knew the Polish Count was the King of France.
She confessed that she had taken from his pocket two letters, one of
which was from the King of Spain, the other from the Abbe de Brogue. This
was discovered afterwards, for neither she nor the Mother-Abbess knew the
names of the writers.  The girl was scolded, and M. Lebel, first valet de
chambre, who had the management of all these affairs, was called; he took
the letters, and carried them to the King, who was very much embarrassed
in what manner to meet a person so well informed of his condition.  The
girl in question, having perceived that the King came secretly to see her
companion, while she was neglected, watched his arrival, and, at the
moment he entered with the Abbess, who was about to withdraw, she rushed
distractedly into the room where her rival was. She immediately threw
herself at the King’s feet.  “Yes,” said she, “you are King of all
France; but that would be nothing to me if you were not also monarch of
my heart: do not forsake me, my beloved sovereign; I was nearly mad when
your life was attempted!”  The Mother-Abbess cried out, “You are mad
now.”  The King embraced her, which appeared to restore her to
tranquility.  They succeeded in getting her out of the room, and a few
days afterwards the unhappy girl was taken to a madhouse, where she was
treated as if she had been insane, for some days.  But she knew well
enough that she was not so, and that the King had really been her lover.
This lamentable affair was related to me by the Mother-Abbess, when I had
some acquaintance with her at the time of the accouchement I have spoken
of, which I never had before, nor since.

To return to my history: Madame de Pompadour said to me, “Be constantly
with the ‘accouchee’, to prevent any stranger, or even the people of the
house, from speaking to her.  You will always say that he is a very rich
Polish nobleman, who is obliged to conceal himself on account of his
relationship to the Queen, who is very devout.  You will find a wet-nurse
in the house, to whom you will deliver the child.  Guimard will manage
all the rest.  You will go to church as a witness; everything must be
conducted as if for a substantial citizen.  The young lady expects to lie
in in five or six days; you will dine with her, and will not leave her
till she is in a state of health to return to the Parc-aux-cerfs, which
she may do in a fortnight, as I imagine, without running any risk.”  I
went, that same evening, to the Avenue de Saint Cloud, where I found the
Abbess and Guimard, an attendant belonging to the castle, but without his
blue coat.  There were, besides, a nurse, a wet-nurse, two old
men-servants, and a girl, who was something between a servant and a
waiting-woman.  The young lady was extremely pretty, and dressed very
elegantly, though not too remarkably.  I supped with her and the
Mother-Abbess, who was called Madame Bertrand.  I had presented the
aigrette Madame de Pompadour gave me before supper, which had greatly
delighted the young lady, and she was in high spirits.

Madame Bertrand had been housekeeper to M. Lebel, first valet de chambre
to the King.  He called her Dominique, and she was entirely in his
confidence.  The young lady chatted with us after supper; she appeared to
be very naive.  The next day, I talked to her in private.  She said to
me, “How is the Count?”  (It was the King whom she called by this title.)
“He will be very sorry not to be with me now; but he was obliged to set
off on a long journey.”  I assented to what she said.  “He is very
handsome,” said she, “and loves me with all his heart.  He promised me an
allowance; but I love him disinterestedly; and, if he would let me, I
would follow him to Poland.”  She afterwards talked to me about her
parents, and about M. Lebel, whom she knew by the name of Durand.  “My
mother,” said she, “kept a large grocer’s shop, and my father was a man
of some consequence; he belonged to the Six Corps, and that, as everybody
knows, is an excellent thing.  He was twice very near being
head-bailiff.”  Her mother had become bankrupt at her father’s death, but
the Count had come to her assistance, and settled upon her fifteen
hundred francs a year, besides giving her six thousand francs down.  On
the sixth day, she was brought to bed, and, according to my instructions,
she was told the child was a girl, though in reality it was a boy; she
was soon to be told that it was dead, in order that no trace of its
existence might remain for a certain time.  It was eventually to be
restored to its mother.  The King gave each of his children about ten
thousand francs a year.  They inherited after each other as they died
off, and seven or eight were already dead.  I returned to Madame de
Pompadour, to whom I had written every day by Guimard.  The next day, the
King sent for me into the room; he did not say a word as to the business
I had been employed upon; but he gave me a large gold snuff-box,
containing two rouleaux of twenty-five louis each.  I curtsied to him,
and retired. Madame asked me a great many questions of the young lady,
and laughed heartily at her simplicity, and at all she had said about the
Polish nobleman.  “He is disgusted with the Princess, and, I think, will
return to Poland for ever, in two months.”--“And the young lady?” said I.
“She will be married in the country,” said she, “with a portion of forty
thousand crowns at the most and a few diamonds.”  This little adventure,
which initiated me into the King’s secrets, far from procuring for me
increased marks of kindness from him, seemed to produce a coldness
towards me; probably because he was ashamed of my knowing his obscure
amours.  He was also embarrassed by the services Madame de Pompadour had
rendered him on this occasion.

Besides the little mistresses of the Parc-aux-cerfs, the King had
sometimes intrigues with ladies of the Court, or from Paris, who wrote to
him.  There was a Madame de L-----, who, though married to a young and
amiable man, with two hundred thousand francs a year, wished absolutely
to become his mistress.  She contrived to have a meeting with him: and
the King, who knew who she was, was persuaded that she was really madly
in love with him.  There is no knowing what might have happened, had she
not died.  Madame was very much alarmed, and was only relieved by her
death from inquietude.  A circumstance took place at this time which
doubled Madame’s friendship for me.  A rich man, who had a situation in
the Revenue Department, called on me one day very secretly, and told me
that he had something of importance to communicate to Madame la Marquise,
but that he should find himself very much embarrassed in communicating it
to her personally, and that he should prefer acquainting me with it. He
then told me, what I already knew, that he had a very beautiful wife, of
whom he was passionately fond; that having on one occasion perceived her
kissing a little ‘porte feuille’, he endeavoured to get possession of it,
supposing there was some mystery attached to it.  One day that she
suddenly left the room to go upstairs to see her sister, who had been
brought to bed, he took the opportunity of opening the porte feuille,
and was very much surprised to find in it a portrait of the King, and a
very tender letter written by His Majesty.  Of the latter he took a copy,
as also of an unfinished letter of his wife, in which she vehemently
entreated the King to allow her to have the pleasure of an interview--the
means she pointed out.  She was to go masked to the public ball at
Versailles, where His Majesty could meet her under favour of a mask. I
assured M. de ------ that I should acquaint Madame with the affair, who
would, no doubt, feel very grateful for the communication. He then added,
“Tell Madame la Marquise that my wife is very clever and very intriguing.
I adore her, and should run distracted were she to be taken from me.”  I
lost not a moment in acquainting Madame with the affair, and gave her the
letter.  She became serious and pensive, and I since learned that she
consulted M. Berrier, Lieutenant of Police, who, by a very simple but
ingeniously conceived plan, put an end to the designs of this lady.  He
demanded an audience of the King, and told him that there was a lady in
Paris who was making free with His Majesty’s name; that he had been given
the copy of a letter, supposed to have been written by His Majesty to the
lady in question.  The copy he put into the King’s hands, who read it in
great confusion, and then tore it furiously to pieces. M. Berrier added,
that it was rumoured that this lady was to meet His Majesty at the public
ball, and, at this very moment, it so happened that a letter was put into
the King’s hand, which proved to be from the lady, appointing the
meeting; at least, M. Berrier judged so, as the King appeared very much
surprised on reading it, and said, “It must be allowed, M. le Lieutenant
of Police, that you are well informed.” M. Berrier added, “I think it my
duty to tell Your Majesty that this lady passes for a very intriguing
person.”  “I believe,” replied the King, “that it is not without
deserving it that she has got that character.”

Madame de Pompadour had many vexations in the midst of all her grandeur.
She often received anonymous letters, threatening her with poison or
assassination: her greatest fear, however, was that of being supplanted
by a rival.  I never saw her in a greater agitation than, one evening, on
her return from the drawing-room at Marly.  She threw down her cloak and
muff, the instant she came in, with an air of ill-humour, and undressed
herself in a hurried manner.  Having dismissed her other women, she said
to me, “I think I never saw anybody so insolent as Madame de Coaslin. I
was seated at the same table with her this evening, at a game of
‘brelan’, and you cannot imagine what I suffered.  The men and women
seemed to come in relays to watch us.  Madame de Coaslin said two or
three times, looking at me, ‘Va tout’, in the most insulting manner.  I
thought I should have fainted, when she said, in a triumphant tone, I
have the ‘brelan’ of kings.  I wish you had seen her courtesy to me on
parting.”--“Did the King,” said I, “show her particular attention?” “You
don’t know him,” said she; “if he were going to lodge her this very night
in my apartment, he would behave coldly to her before people, and would
treat me with the utmost kindness.  This is the effect of his education,
for he is, by nature, kind-hearted and frank.”  Madame de Pompadour’s
alarms lasted for some months, when she, one day, said to me, “That
haughty Marquise has missed her aim; she frightened the King by her grand
airs, and was incessantly teasing him for money.  Now you, perhaps, may
not know that the King would sign an order for forty thousand LOUIS
without a thought, and would give a hundred out of his little private
treasury with the greatest reluctance.  Lebel, who likes me better than
he would a new mistress in my place, either by chance or design had
brought a charming little sultana to the Parc-aux-cerfs, who has cooled
the King a little towards the haughty Vashti, by giving him occupation,
has received a hundred thousand francs, some jewels, and an estate.
Jannette--[The Intendant of Police.]--has rendered me great service, by
showing the King extracts from the letters broken open at the
post-office, concerning the report that Madame de Coaslin was coming into
favour: The King was much impressed by a letter from an old counsellor of
the Parliament, who wrote to one of his friends as follows: ‘It is quite
as reasonable that the King should have a female friend and
confidante--as that we, in our several degrees, should so indulge
ourselves; but it is desirable that  he should keep the one he has; she
is gentle, injures nobody, and her fortune is made.  The one who is now
talked of will be as haughty as high birth can make her.  She must have
an allowance of a million francs a year, since she is said to be
excessively extravagant; her relations must be made Dukes, Governors of
provinces, and Marshals, and, in the end, will surround the King, and
overawe the Ministers.’”

Madame de Pompadour had this passage, which had been sent to her by M.
Jannette, the Intendant of the Police, who enjoyed the King’s entire
confidence.  He had carefully watched the King’s look, while he read the
letter, and he saw that the arguments of this counsellor, who was not a
disaffected person, made a great impression upon him.  Some time
afterwards, Madame de Pompadour said to me, “The haughty Marquise behaved
like Mademoiselle Deschamps, and she is turned off.”

[A courtesan, distinguished for her charms, and still more so for an
extraordinary proof of patriotism.  At a time when the public Treasury
was exhausted, Mademoiselle Deschamps sent all her plate to the Mint.
Louis XIV.  boasted of this act of generous devotion to her country.  The
Duc d’Ayen made it the subject of a pleasantry, which detracted nothing
from the merit of the sacrifice--but which is rather too gay for us to
venture upon.]

This was not Madame’s only subject of alarm.  A relation of Madame
d’Estrades, wife to the Marquis de C----, had made the most pointed
advances to the King, much more than were necessary for a man who justly
thought himself the handsomest man in France, and who was, moreover, a
King.

[The Comtesse d’Estrades, a relative of M. Normand, and a flatterer of
Madame de Pompadour, who brought her to Court, was secretly in the pay of
the Comte d’Argenson.  That Minister, who did not disdain la Fillon, from
whom he extracted useful information, knew all that passed at the Court
of the favourite, by means of Madame d’Estrades, whose ingratitude and
perfidiousness he liberally paid.]

He was perfectly persuaded that every woman would yield to the slightest
desire he might deign to manifest.  He, therefore, thought it a mere
matter of course that women fell in love with him.  M. de Stainville had
a hand in marring the success of that intrigue; and, soon afterwards,
the Marquise de C-----, who was confined to her apartments at Marly, by
her relations, escaped through a closet to a rendezvous, and was caught
with a young man in a corridor.  The Spanish Ambassador, coming out of
his apartments with flambeaux, was the person who witnessed this scene.
Madame d’Estrades affected to know nothing of her cousin’s intrigues,
and kept up an appearance of the tenderest attachment to Madame de
Pompadour, whom she was habitually betraying.  She acted as spy for M.
d’Argenson, in the cabinets, and in Madame de Pompadour’s apartments;
and, when she could discover nothing, she had recourse to her invention,
in order that she might not lose her importance with her lover.  This
Madame d’Estrades owed her whole existence to the bounties of Madame,
and yet, ugly as she was, she had tried to get the King away from her.
One day, when he, had got rather drunk at Choisy (I think, the only time
that, ever happened to him), he went on board a beautiful barge, whither
Madame, being ill of an indigestion, could not accompany him.  Madame
d’Estrades seized this opportunity.  She got into the barge, and, on
their return, as it was dark, she followed the King into a private
closet, where he was believed to be sleeping on a couch, and there went
somewhat beyond any ordinary advances to him.  Her account of the matter
to Madame was, that she had gone into the closet upon her own affairs,
and that the King, had followed her, and had tried to ravish her.  She
was at full liberty to make what story she pleased, for the King knew
neither what he had said, nor what he had done.  I shall finish this
subject by a short history concerning a young lady.  I had been, one
day, to the theatre at Compiegne.  When I returned, Madame asked me
several questions about the play; whether there was much company, and
whether I did not see a very beautiful girl.  I replied, “That there
was, indeed, a girl in a box near mine, who was surrounded by all the
young men about the Court.”  She smiled, and said, “That is Mademoiselle
Dorothee; she went, this evening, to see the King sup in public, and
to-morrow she is to be taken to the hunt.  You are surprised to find me
so well informed, but I know a great deal more about her.  She was
brought here by a Gascon, named Dubarre or Dubarri, who is the greatest
scoundrel in France.  He founds all his hopes of advancement on
Mademoiselle Dorothee’s charms, which he thinks the King cannot resist.
She is, really, very beautiful..  She was pointed out to me in my little
garden, whither she was taken to walk on purpose.  She is the daughter
of a water-carrier, at Strasbourg, and her charming lover demands to be
sent Minister to Cologne, as a beginning.”--“Is it possible, Madame,
that you can have been rendered uneasy by such a creature as
that?”--“Nothing is impossible,” replied she; “though I think the King
would scarcely dare to give such a scandal. Besides, happily, Lebel, to
quiet his conscience, told the King that the beautiful Dorothee’s lover
is infected with a horrid disease;” and, added he, “Your Majesty would
not get rid of that as you have done of the scrofula.” This was quite
enough to keep the young lady at a distance.

“I pity you sincerely, Madame,” said I, “while everybody else envies
you.”  “Ah!” replied she, “my life is that of the Christian, a perpetual
warfare.  This was not the case with the woman who enjoyed the favour of
Louis XIV.  Madame de La Valliere suffered herself to be deceived by
Madame de Montespan, but it was her own fault, or, rather, the effect of
her extreme good nature.  She was entirely devoid of suspicion at first,
because she could not believe her friend perfidious.  Madame de
Montespan’s empire was shaken by Madame de Fontanges, and overthrown by
Madame de Maintenon; but her haughtiness, her caprices, had already
alienated the King.  He had not, however, such rivals as mine; it is
true, their baseness is my security.  I have, in general, little to fear
but casual infidelities, and the chance that they may not all be
sufficiently transitory for my safety.  The King likes variety, but he is
also bound by habit; he fears eclats, and detests manoeuvring women.  The
little Marechale (de Mirepoig) one day said to me, ‘It is your staircase
that the King loves; he is accustomed to go up and down it.  But, if he
found another woman to whom he could talk of hunting and business as he
does to you, it would be just the same to him in three days.’”

I write without plan, order, or date, just as things come into my mind;
and I shall now go to the Abbe de Bernis, whom I liked very much, because
he was good-natured, and treated me kindly.  One day, just as Madame de
Pompadour had finished dressing, M. de Noailles asked to speak to her in
private.  I, accordingly, retired.  The Count looked full of important
business.  I heard their conversation, as there was only the door between
us.

“A circumstance has taken place,” said he, “which I think it my duty to
communicate to the King; but I would not do so without first informing
you of it, since it concerns one of your friends for whom I have the
utmost regard and respect.  The Abbe de Bernis had a mind to shoot, this
morning, and went, with two or three of his people, armed with guns, into
the little park, where the Dauphin would not venture to shoot without
asking the King’s permission.  The guards, surprised at hearing the
report of guns, ran to the spot, and were greatly astonished at the sight
of M. de Bernis.  They very respectfully asked to see his permission,
when they found, to their astonishment, that he had none.  They begged of
him to desist, telling him that, if they did their duty, they should
arrest him; but they must, at all events, instantly acquaint me with the
circumstance, as Ranger of the Park of Versailles.  They added, that the
King must have heard the firing, and that they begged of him to retire.
The Abbe apologized, on the score of ignorance, and assured them that he
had my permission.  ‘The Comte de Noailles,’ said they, ‘could only grant
permission to shoot in the more remote parts, and in the great park.’”
 The Count made a great merit of his eagerness to give the earliest
information to Madame.  She told him to leave the task of communicating
it to the King to her, and begged of him to say nothing about the matter.
M. de Marigny, who did not like the Abbe, came to see me in the evening;
and I affected to know nothing of the story, and to hear it for the first
time from him.  “He must have been out of his senses,” said he, “to shoot
under the King’s windows,”--and enlarged much on the airs he gave
himself.  Madame de Pompadour gave this affair the best colouring she
could the King was, nevertheless, greatly disgusted at it, and twenty
times, since the Abbe’s disgrace, when he passed over that part of the
park, he said, “This is where the Abbe took his pleasure.”  The King
never liked him; and Madame de Pompadour told me one night, after his
disgrace, when I was sitting up with her in her illness, that she saw,
before he had been Minister a week, that he was not fit for his office.
“If that hypocritical Bishop,” said she, speaking of the Bishop of
Mirepoix, “had not prevented the King from granting him a pension of four
hundred louis a year, which he had promised me, he would never have been
appointed Ambassador.  I should, afterwards, have been able to give him
an income of eight hundred louis a year, perhaps the place of master of
the chapel.  Thus he would have been happier, and I should have had
nothing to regret.”  I took the liberty of saying that I did not agree
with her.  That he had yet remaining advantages, of which he could not be
deprived; that his exile would terminate; and that he would then be a
Cardinal, with an income of eight thousand louis a year.  “That is true,”
 she replied; “but I think of the mortifications he has undergone, and of
the ambition which devours him; and, lastly, I think of myself.  I should
have still enjoyed his society, and should have had, in my declining
years, an old and amiable friend, if he had not been Minister.”  The King
sent him away in anger, and was strongly inclined to refuse him the hat.
M. Quesnay told me, some months afterwards, that the Abbe wanted to be
Prime Minister; that he had drawn up a memorial, setting forth that in
difficult crises the public good required that there should be a central
point (that was his expression), towards which everything should be
directed.  Madame de Pompadour would not present the memorial; he
insisted, though she said to him, “You will rain yourself.”  The King
cast his eyes over it, and said “‘central point,’--that is to say
himself, he wants to be Prime Minister.”  Madame tried to apologize for
him, and said, “That expression might refer to the Marechal de
Belle-Isle.”--“Is he not just about to be made Cardinal?” said the King.
“This is a fine manoeuvre; he knows well enough that, by means of that
dignity, he would compel the Ministers to assemble at his house, and then
M. l’Abbe would be the central point.  Wherever there is a Cardinal in
the council, he is sure, in the end, to take the lead.  Louis XIV., for
this reason, did not choose to admit the Cardinal de Janson into the
council, in spite of his great esteem for him.  The Cardinal de Fleury
told me the same thing.  He had some desire that the Cardinal de Tencin
should succeed him; but his sister was such an intrigante that Cardinal
de Fleury advised me to have nothing to do with the matter, and I behaved
so as to destroy all his hopes, and to undeceive others.  M. d’Argenson
has strongly impressed me with the same opinion, and has succeeded in
destroying all my respect for him.”  This is what the King said,
according to my friend Quesnay, who, by the bye, was a great genius, as
everybody said, and a very lively, agreeable man.  He liked to chat with
me about the country.  I had been bred up there, and he used to set me a
talking about the meadows of Normandy and Poitou, the wealth of the
farmers, and the modes of culture.  He was the best-natured man in the
world, and the farthest removed from petty intrigue.  While he lived at
Court, he was much more occupied with the best manner of cultivating land
than with anything that passed around him.  The man whom he esteemed the
most was M. de la Riviere, a Counsellor of Parliament, who was also
Intendant of Martinique; he looked upon him as a man of the greatest
genius, and thought him the only person fit for the financial department
of administration.

The Comtesse d’Estrades, who owed everything to Madame de Pompadour, was
incessantly intriguing against her.  She was clever enough to destroy all
proofs of her manoeuvres, but she could not so easily prevent suspicion.
Her intimate connection with M. d’Argenson gave offence to Madame, and,
for some time, she was more reserved with her.  She, afterwards, did a
thing which justly irritated the King and Madame.  The King, who wrote a
great deal, had written to Madame de Pompadour a long letter concerning
an assembly of the Chambers of Parliament, and had enclosed a letter of
M. Berrien.  Madame was ill, and laid those letters on a little table by
her bedside.  M. de Gontaut came in, and gossipped about trifles, as
usual.  Madame d’Amblimont also came, and stayed but very little time.
Just as I was going to resume a book which I had been reading to Madame,
the Comtesse d’Estrades entered, placed herself near Madame’s bed, and
talked to her for some time.  As soon as she was gone, Madame called me,
asked what was o’clock, and said, “Order my door to be shut, the King
will soon be here.”  I gave the order, and returned; and Madame told me
to give her the King’s letter, which was on the table with some other
papers.  I gave her the papers, and told her there was nothing else.  She
was very uneasy at not finding the letter, and, after enumerating the
persons who had been in the room, she said, “It cannot be the little
Countess, nor Gontaut, who has taken this letter.  It can only be the
Comtesse d’Estrades;--and that is too bad.”  The King came, and was
extremely angry, as Madame told me.  Two days afterwards, he sent Madame
d’Estrades into exile.  There was no doubt that she took the letter; the
King’s handwriting had probably awakened her curiosity.  This occurrence
gave great pain to M. d’Argenson, who was bound to her, as Madame de
Pompadour said, by his love of intrigue.  This redoubled his hatred of
Madame, and she accused him of favouring the publication of a libel, in
which she was represented as a worn-out mistress, reduced to the vile
occupation of providing new objects to please her lover’s appetite.  She
was characterised as superintendent of the Parc-aux-cerfs, which was said
to cost hundreds of thousands of louis a year.  Madame de Pompadour did,
indeed, try to conceal some of the King’s weaknesses, but she never knew
one of the sultanas of that seraglio.  There were, however, scarcely ever
more than two at once, and often only one.  When they married, they
received some jewels, and four thousand louis.  The Parc-aux-cerfs was
sometimes vacant for five or six months.  I was surprised, some time
after, at seeing the Duchesse de Luynes, Lady of Honour to the Queen,
come privately to see Madame de Pompadour.  She afterwards came openly.
One evening, after Madame was in bed, she called me, and said, “My dear,
you will be delighted; the Queen has given me the place of Lady of the
Palace; tomorrow I am to be presented to her: you must make me look
well.”  I knew that the King was not so well pleased at this as she was;
he was afraid that it would give rise to scandal, and that it might be
thought he had forced this nomination upon the Queen.  He had, however,
done no such thing.  It had been represented to the Queen that it was an
act of heroism on her part to forget the past; that all scandal would be
obliterated when Madame de Pompadour was seen to belong to the Court in
an honourable manner; and that it would be the best proof that nothing
more than friendship now subsisted between the King and the favourite.
The Queen received her very graciously.  The devotees flattered
themselves they should be protected by Madame, and, for some time, were
full of her praises.  Several of the Dauphin’s friends came in private to
see her, and some obtained promotion.  The Chevalier du Muy, however,
refused to come.  The King had the greatest possible contempt for them,
and granted them nothing with a good grace.  He, one day, said of a man
of great family, who wished to be made Captain of the Guards, “He is a
double spy, who wants to be paid on both sides.”  This was the moment at
which Madame de Pompadour seemed to me to enjoy the most complete
satisfaction.  The devotees came to visit her without scruple, and did
not forget to make use of every opportunity of serving themselves. Madame
de Lu----- had set them the example.  The Doctor laughed at this change
in affairs, and was very merry at the expense of the saints. “You must
allow, however, that they are consistent,” said I, “and may be sincere.”
 “Yes,” said he; “but then they should not ask for anything.”

One day, I was at Doctor Quesnay’s, whilst Madame de Pompadour was at
the theatre.  The Marquis de Mirabeau came in, and the conversation was,
for some time, extremely tedious to me, running entirely on ‘net
produce’; at length, they talked of other things.

[The author of “L’Ami des Hommes,” one of the leaders of the sect of
Economistes, and father of the celebrated Mirabeau.  After the death of
Quesnay, the Grand Master of the Order, the Marquis de Mirabeau was
unanimously elected his successor.  Mirabeau was not deficient in a
certain enlargement of mind, nor in acquirements, nor even in patriotism;
but his writings are enthusiastical, and show that he had little more
than glimpses of the truth.  The Friend of Man was the enemy of all his
family.  He beat his servants, and did not pay them.  The reports of the
lawsuit with his wife, in 1775, prove that this philosopher possessed, in
the highest possible degree, all the anti-conjugal qualities.  It is said
that his eldest son wrote two contradictory depositions, and was paid by
both sides.]

Mirabeau said, “I think the King looks ill, he grows old.”--“So much the
worse, a thousand times so much the worse,” said Quesnay; “it would be
the greatest possible loss to France if he died;” and he raised his
hands, and sighed deeply.  “I do not doubt that you are attached to the
King, and with reason,” said Mirabeau: “I am attached to him too; but I
never saw you so much moved.”--“Ah!” said Quesnay, “I think of what would
follow.”--“Well, the Dauphin is virtuous.”--“Yes; and full of good
intentions; nor is he deficient in understanding; but canting hypocrites
would possess an absolute empire over a Prince who regards them as
oracles.  The Jesuits would govern the kingdom, as they did at the end of
Louis XIV.’s reign: and you would see the fanatical Bishop of Verdun
Prime Minister, and La Vauguyon all-powerful under some other title. The
Parliaments must then mind how they behave; they will not be better
treated than my friends the philosophers.”--“But they go too far,” said
Mirabeau; “why openly attack religion?”--“I allow that,” replied the
Doctor; “but how is it possible not to be rendered indignant by the
fanaticism of others, and by recollecting all the blood that has flowed
during the last two hundred years?  You must not then again irritate
them, and revive in France the time of Mary in England.  But what is done
is done, and I often exhort them to be moderate; I wish they would follow
the example of our friend Duclos.”--“You are right,” replied Mirabeau;
“he said to me a few days ago, ‘These philosophers are going on at such a
rate that they will force me to go to vespers and high mass;’ but, in
fine, the Dauphin is virtuous, well-informed, and intellectual.”--“It is
the commencement of his reign, I fear,” said Quesnay, “when the imprudent
proceedings of our friends will be represented to him in the most
unfavourable point of view; when the Jansenists and Molinists will make
common cause, and be strongly supported by the Dauphine.  I thought that
M. de Muy was moderate, and that he would temper the headlong fury of the
others; but I heard him say that Voltaire merited condign punishment. Be
assured, sir, that the times of John Huss and Jerome of Prague will
return; but I hope not to live to see it.  I approve of Voltaire having
hunted down the Pompignans: were it not for the ridicule with which he
covered them, that bourgeois Marquis would have been preceptor to the
young Princes, and, aided by his brother, would have succeeded in again
lighting the faggots of persecution.”--“What ought to give you confidence
in the Dauphin,” said Mirabeau, “is, that, notwithstanding the devotion
of Pompignan, he turns him into ridicule.  A short time back, seeing him
strutting about with an air of inflated pride, he said to a person, who
told it to me, ‘Our friend Pompignan thinks that he is something.’” On
returning home, I wrote down this conversation.

I, one day, found Quesnay in great distress.  “Mirabeau,” said he, “is
sent to Vincennes, for his work on taxation.  The Farmers General have
denounced  him, and procured his arrest; his wife is going to throw
herself at the feet of Madame de Pompadour to-day.”  A few minutes
afterwards, I went into Madame’s apartment, to assist at her toilet, and
the Doctor came in.  Madame said to him, “You must be much concerned at
the disgrace of your friend Mirabeau.  I am sorry for it too, for I like
his brother.”  Quesnay replied, “I am very far from believing him to be
actuated by bad intentions, Madame; he loves the King and the people.”
 “Yes,” said she; “his ‘Ami des Hommes’ did him great honour.”  At this
moment the Lieutenant of Police entered, and Madame said to him, “Have
you seen M. de Mirabeau’s book?”--“Yes, Madame; but it was not I who
denounced it?”--“What do you think of it?”--“I think he might have said
almost all it contains with impunity, if he had been more circumspect as
to the manner; there is, among other objectionable passages, this, which
occurs at the beginning: Your Majesty has about twenty millions of
subjects; it is only by means of money that you can obtain their
services, and there is no money.”--“What, is there really that, Doctor?”
 said Madame.  “It is true, they are the first lines in the book, and I
confess that they are imprudent; but, in reading the work, it is clear
that he laments that patriotism is extinct in the hearts of his
fellow-citizens, and that he desires to rekindle it.”  The King entered:
we went out, and I wrote down on Quesnay’s table what I had just heard.
I them returned to finish dressing Madame de Pompadour: she said to me,
“The King is extremely angry with Mirabeau; but I tried to soften him,
and so did the Lieutenant of Police.  This will increase Quesnay’s fears.
Do you know what he said to me to-day?  The King had been talking to him
in my room, and the Doctor appeared timid and agitated.  After the King
was gone, I said to him, ‘You always seem so embarrassed in the King’s
presence, and yet he is so good-natured.’--‘I Madame,’ said he, ‘I left
my native village at the age of forty, and I have very little experience
of the world, nor can I accustom myself to its usages without great
difficulty.  When I am in a room with the King, I say to myself, This is
a man who can order my head to be cut off; and that idea embarrasses
me.’--‘But do not the King’s justice and kindness set you at
ease?’--‘That is very true in reasoning,’ said he; ‘but the sentiment is
more prompt, and inspires me with fear before I have time to say to
myself all that is calculated to allay it.’”

I got her to repeat this conversation, and wrote it down immediately,
that I might not forget it.

An anonymous letter was addressed to the King and Madame de Pompadour;
and, as the author was very anxious that it should not miscarry, he sent
copies to the Lieutenant of Police, sealed and directed to the King, to
Madame de Pompadour, and to M. de Marigny.  This letter produced a strong
impression on Madame, and on the King, and still more, I believe, on the
Duc de Choiseul, who had received a similar one.  I went on my knees to
M. de Marigny, to prevail on him to allow me to copy it, that I might
show it to the Doctor.  It is as follows:

“Sire--It is a zealous servant who writes to Your Majesty.  Truth is
always better, particularly to Kings; habituated to flattery, they see
objects only under those colours most likely to please them.  I have
reflected, and read much; and here is what my meditations have suggested
to me to lay before Your Majesty.  They have accustomed you to be
invisible, and inspired you with a timidity which prevents you from
speaking; thus all direct communication is cut off between the master and
his subjects.  Shut up in the interior of your palace, you are becoming
every day like the Emperors of the East; but see, Sire, their fate!  ‘I
have troops,’ Your Majesty will say; such, also, is their support: but,
when the only security of a King rests upon his troops; when he is only,
as one may say, a King of the soldiers, these latter feel their own
strength, and abuse it. Your finances are in the greatest disorder, and
the great majority of states have perished through this cause.  A
patriotic spirit sustained the ancient states, and united all classes for
the safety of their country.  In the present times, money has taken the
place of this spirit; it has become the universal lever, and you are in
want of it.  A spirit of finance affects every department of the state;
it reigns triumphant at Court; all have become venal; and all distinction
of rank is broken up.  Your Ministers are without genius and capacity
since the dismissal of MM. d’Argenson and de Machault. You alone cannot
judge of their incapacity, because they lay before you what has been
prepared by skilful clerks, but which they pass as their own.  They
provide only for the necessity of the day, but there is no spirit of
government in their acts.  The military changes that have taken place
disgust the troops, and cause the most deserving officers to resign; a
seditious flame has sprung up in the very bosom of the Parliaments; you
seek to corrupt them, and the remedy is worse than the disease.  It is
introducing vice into the sanctuary of justice, and gangrene into the
vital parts of the commonwealth.  Would a corrupted Parliament have
braved the fury of the League, in order to preserve the crown for the
legitimate sovereign?  Forgetting the maxims of Louis XIV., who well
understood the danger of confiding the administration to noblemen, you
have chosen M. de Choiseul, and even given him three departments; which
is a much heavier burden than that which he would have to support as
Prime Minister, because the latter has only to oversee the details
executed by the Secretaries of State.  The public fully appreciate this
dazzling Minister.  He is nothing more than a ‘petit-maitre’, without
talents or information, who has a little phosphorus in his mind.  There
is a thing well worthy of remark, Sire; that is, the open war carried on
against religion.  Henceforward there can spring up no new sects, because
the general belief has been shaken, that no one feels inclined to occupy
himself with difference of sentiment upon some of the articles.  The
Encyclopedists, under pretence of enlightening mankind, are sapping the
foundations of religion. All the different kinds of liberty are
connected; the Philosophers and the Protestants tend towards
republicanism, as well as the Jansenists.  The Philosophers strike at the
root, the others lop the branches; and their efforts, without being
concerted, will one day lay the tree low.  Add to these the Economists;
whose object is political liberty, as that of the others is liberty of
worship, and the Government may find itself, in twenty or thirty years,
undermined in every direction, and will then fall with a crash. If Your
Majesty, struck by this picture, but too true, should ask me for a
remedy, I should say, that it is necessary to bring back the Government
to its principles, and, above all, to lose no time in restoring order to
the state of the finances, because the embarrassments incident to a
country in a state of debt necessitate fresh taxes, which, after grinding
the people, induce them towards revolt.  It is my opinion that Your
Majesty would do well to appear more among your people; to shew your
approbation of useful services, and your displeasure of errors and
prevarications, and neglect of duty: in a word, to let it be seen that
rewards and punishments, appointments and dismissals, proceed from
yourself.  You will then inspire gratitude by your favours, and fear by
your reproaches; you will then be the object of immediate and personal
attachment, instead of which, everything is now referred to your
Ministers. The confidence in the King, which is habitual to your people,
is shewn by the exclamation, so common among them, ‘Ah! if the King knew
it’  They love to believe that the King would remedy all their evils, if
he knew of them.  But, on the other hand, what sort of ideas must they
form of kings, whose duty it is to be informed of everything, and to
superintend everything, that concerns the public, but who are,
nevertheless, ignorant of everything which the discharge of their
functions requires them to know?  ‘Rex, roi, regere, regar, conduire’--to
rule, to conduct--these words sufficiently denote their duties.  What
would be said of a father who got rid of the charge of his children as of
a burthen?

“A time will come, Sire, when the people shall be enlightened--and that
time is probably approaching.  Resume the reins of government, hold them
with a firm hand, and act, so that it cannot be said of you, ‘Faeminas et
scorta volvit ammo et haec principatus praemia putat’:--Sire, if I see
that my sincere advice should have produced any change, I shall continue
it, and enter into more details; if not, I shall remain silent.”

Now that I am upon the subject of anonymous letters to the King, I must
just mention that it is impossible to conceive how frequent they were.
People were extremely assiduous in telling either unpleasant truths, or
alarming lies, with a view to injure others.  As an instance, I shall
transcribe one concerning Voltaire, who paid great court to Madame de
Pompadour when he was in France.  This letter was written long after the
former.

“Madame--M. de Voltaire has just dedicated his tragedy of Tancred to you;
this ought to be an offering of respect and gratitude; but it is, in
fact, an insult, and you will form the same opinion of it as the public
has done if you read it with attention.  You will see that this
distinguished writer appears to betray a consciousness that the subject
of his encomiums is not worthy of them, and to endeavour to excuse
himself for them to the public.  These are his words: ‘I have seen your
graces and talents unfold themselves from your infancy.  At all periods
of your life I have received proofs of your uniform and unchanging
kindness.  If any critic be found to censure the homage I pay you, he
must have a heart formed for ingratitude.  I am under great obligations
to you, Madame, and these obligations it is my duty to proclaim.’

“What do these words really signify, unless that Voltaire feels it may be
thought extraordinary that he should dedicate his work to a woman who
possesses but a small share of the public esteem, and that the sentiment
of gratitude must plead his excuse?  Why should he suppose that the
homage he pays you will be censured, whilst we daily see dedications
addressed to silly gossips who have neither rank nor celebrity, or to
women of exceptional conduct, without any censure being attracted by it?”

M. de Marigny, and Colin, Madame de Pompadour’s steward, were of the same
opinion as Quesnay, that the author of this letter was extremely
malicious; that he insulted Madame, and tried to injure Voltaire; but
that he was, in fact, right.  Voltaire, from that moment, was entirely
out of favour with Madame, and with the King, and he certainly never
discovered the cause.

The King, who admired everything of the age of Louis XIV., and
recollected that the Boileaus and Racines had been protected by that
monarch, who was indebted to them, in part, for the lustre of his reign,
was flattered at having such a man as Voltaire among his subjects. But
still he feared him, and had but little esteem for him.  He could not
help saying, “Moreover, I have treated him as well as Louis XIV. treated
Racine and Boileau.  I have given him, as Louis XIV. gave to Racine, some
pensions, and a place of gentleman in ordinary.  It is not my fault if he
has committed absurdities, and has had the pretension to become a
chamberlain, to wear an order, and sup with a King.  It is not the
fashion in France; and, as there are here a few more men of wit and
noblemen than in Prussia, it would require that I should have a very
large table to assemble them all at it.”  And then he reckoned upon his
fingers, Maupertuis, Fontenelle, La Mothe, Voltaire, Piron, Destouches,
Montesquieu, the Cardinal Polignac.  “Your Majesty forgets,” said some
one, “D’Alembert and Clairaut.”--“And Crebillon,” said he.  “And la
Chaussee, and the younger Crebillon,” said some one.  “He ought to be
more agreeable than his father.”--“And there are also the Abbes Prevot
and d’Olivet.”--“Pretty well,” said the King; “and for the last twenty
years all that (tout cela) would have dined and supped at my table.”

Madame de Pompadour repeated to me this conversation, which I wrote down
the same evening.  M. de Marigny, also, talked to me about it.
“Voltaire,” said he, “has always had a fancy for being Ambassador, and he
did all he could to make the people believe that he was charged with some
political mission, the first time he visited Prussia.”

The people heard of the attempt on the King’s life with transports of
fury, and with the greatest distress.  Their cries were heard under the
windows of Madame de Pompadour’s apartment.  Mobs were collected, and
Madame feared the fate of Madame de Chateauroux.  Her friends came in,
every minute, to give her intelligence.  Her room was, at all times, like
a church; everybody seemed to claim a right to go in and out when he
chose.  Some came, under pretence of sympathising, to observe her
countenance and manner.  She did nothing but weep and faint away.  Doctor
Quesnay never left her, nor did I.  M. de St. Florentin came to see her
several times, so did the Comptroller-General, and M. Rouilld; but M. de
Machault did not come.  The Duchesse de Brancas came very frequently. The
Abbe de Bernis never left us, except to go to enquire for the King. The
tears came in his eyes whenever he looked at Madame.  Doctor Quesnay saw
the King five or six times a day.  “There is nothing to fear,” said he to
Madame.  “If it were anybody else, he might go to a ball.”  My son went
the next day, as he had done the day the event occurred, to see what was
going on at the Castle.  He told us, on his return, that the Keeper of
the Seals was with the King.  I sent him back, to see what course he took
on leaving the King.  He came running back in half an hour, to tell me
that the Keeper of the Seals had gone to his own house, followed by a
crowd of people.  When I told this to Madame, she burst into tears, and
said, “Is that a friend?”  The Abbe de Bernis said, “You must not judge
him hastily, in such a moment as this.”  I returned into the drawing-room
about an hour after, when the Keeper of the Seals entered.  He passed me,
with his usual cold and severe look.  “How is Madame de Pompadour?”  said
he.  “Alas!” replied I, “as you may imagine!”  He passed on to her
closet.  Everybody retired, and he remained for half an hour.  The Abbe
returned and Madame rang.  I went into her room, the Abbe following me.
She was in tears.  “I must go, my dear Abbe,” said she.  I made her take
some orange-flower water, in a silver goblet, for her teeth chattered.
She then told me to call her equerry.  He came in, and she calmly gave
him her orders, to have everything prepared at her hotel, in Paris; to
tell all her people to get ready to go; and to desire her coachman not to
be out of the way.  She then shut herself up, to confer with the Abbe de
Bernis, who left her, to go to the Council.  Her door was then shut,
except to the ladies with whom she was particularly intimate, M. de
Soubise, M. de Gontaut, the Ministers, and some others.  Several ladies,
in the greatest distress, came to talk to me in my room: they compared
the conduct of M. de Machault with that of M. de Richelieu, at Metz.
Madame had related to them the circumstances extremely to the honour of
the Duke, and, by contrast, the severest satire on the Keeper of the
Seals.  “He thinks, or pretends to think,” said she, “that the priests
will be clamorous for my dismissal; but Quesnay and all the physicians
declare that there is not the slightest danger.”  Madame having sent for
me, I saw the Marechale de Mirepoix coming in.  While she was at the
door, she cried out, “What are all those trunks, Madame?  Your people
tell me you are going.”--“Alas!  my dear friend, such is our Master’s
desire, as M. de Machault tells me.”--“And what does he advise?”  said
the Marechale.  “That I should go without delay.”  During this
conversation, I was undressing Madame, who wished to be at her ease on
her chaise-longue.  “Your Beeper of the Seals wants to get the power into
his own hands, and betrays you; he who quits the field loses it.”  I went
out.  M. de Soubise entered, then the Abbe and M. de Marigny.  The
latter, who was very kind to me, came into my room an hour afterwards. I
was alone.  “She will remain,” said he; “but, hush!--she will make an
appearance of going, in order not to set her enemies at work.  It is the
little Marechale who prevailed upon her to stay: her keeper (so she
called M. de Machault) will pay for it.”  Quesnay came in, and, having
heard what was said, with his monkey airs, began to relate a fable of a
fox, who, being at dinner with other beasts, persuaded one of them that
his enemies were seeking him, in order that he might get possession of
his share in his absence.  I did not see Madame again till very late, at
her going to bed.  She was more calm.  Things improved, from day to day,
and de Machault, the faithless friend, was dismissed.  The King returned
to Madame de Pompadour, as usual.  I learnt, by M. de Marigny, that the
Abbe had been, one day, with M. d’Argenson, to endeavour to persuade him
to live on friendly terms with Madame, and that he had been very coldly
received.  “He is the more arrogant,” said he, “on account of Machault’s
dismissal, which leaves the field clear for him, who has more experience,
and more talent; and I fear that he will, therefore, be disposed to
declare war till death.”  The next day, Madame having ordered her chaise,
I was curious to know where she was going, for she went out but little,
except to church, and to the houses of the Ministers.  I was told that
she was gone to visit M. d’Argenson.  She returned in an hour, at
farthest, and seemed very much out of spirits.  She leaned on the
chimneypiece, with her eyes fixed on the border of it.  M. de Bernis
entered.  I waited for her to take off her cloak and gloves.  She had her
hands in her muff.  The Abbe stood looking at her for some minutes; at
last he said, “You look like a sheep in a reflecting mood.”  She awoke
from her reverie, and, throwing her muff on the easy-chair, replied, “It
is a wolf who makes the sheep reflect.”  I went out: the King entered
shortly after, and I heard Madame de Pompadour sobbing.  The Abbe came
into my room, and told me to bring some Hoffman’s drops: the King himself
mixed the draught with sugar, and presented it to her in the kindest
manner possible.  She smiled, and kissed the King’s hands.  I left the
room.  Two days after, very early in the morning, I heard of M.
d’Argenson’s exile.  It was her doing, and was, indeed, the strongest
proof of her influence that could be given.  The King was much attached
to M. d’Argenson, and the war, then carrying on, both by sea and land,
rendered the dismissal of two such Ministers extremely imprudent.  This
was the universal opinion at the time.

Many people talk of the letter of the Comte d’Argenson to Madame
d’Esparbes.  I give it, according to the most correct version:

“The doubtful is, at length, decided.  The Keeper of the Seals is
dismissed.  You will be recalled, my dear Countess, and we shall be
masters of the field.”

It is much less generally known that Arboulin, whom Madame calls Bou-bou,
was supposed to be the person who, on the very day of the dismissal of
the Keeper of the Seals, bribed the Count’s confidential courier, who
gave him this letter.  Is this report founded on truth?  I cannot swear
that it is; but it is asserted that the letter is written in the Count’s
style.  Besides, who could so immediately have invented it?  It, however,
appeared certain, from the extreme displeasure of the King, that he had
some other subject of complaint against M. d’Argenson, besides his
refusing to be reconciled with Madame.  Nobody dares to show the
slightest attachment to the disgraced Minister.  I asked the ladies who
were most intimate with Madame de Pompadour, as well as my own friends,
what they knew of the matter; but they knew nothing.  I can understand
why Madame did not let them into her confidence at that moment.  She will
be less reserved in time.  I care very little about it, since I see that
she is well, and appears happy.

The King said a thing, which did him honour, to a person whose name
Madame withheld from me.  A nobleman, who had been a most assiduous
courtier of the Count, said, rubbing his hands with an air of great joy,
“I have just seen the Comte d’Argenson’s baggage set out.”  When the King
heard him, he went up to Madame, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “And
immediately the cock crew.”

“I believe this is taken from Scripture, where Peter denies Our Lord.  I
confess, this circumstance gave me great pleasure.  It showed that the
King is not the dupe of those around him, and that he hates treachery and
ingratitude.”

Madame sent for me yesterday evening, at seven o’clock, to read something
to her; the ladies who were intimate with her were at Paris, and M. de
Gontaut ill.  “The King,” said she, “will stay late at the Council this
evening; they are occupied with the affairs of the Parliament again.” She
bade me leave off reading, and I was going to quit the room, but she
called out, “Stop.”  She rose; a letter was brought in for her, and she
took it with an air of impatience and ill-humour.  After a considerable
time she began to talk openly, which only happened when she was extremely
vexed; and, as none of her confidential friends were at hand, she said to
me, “This is from my brother.  It is what he would not have dared to say
to me, so he writes.  I had arranged a marriage for him with the daughter
of a man of title; he appeared to be well inclined to it, and I,
therefore, pledged my word.  He now tells me that he has made inquiries;
that the parents are people of insupportable hauteur; that the daughter
is very badly educated; and that he knows, from authority not to be
doubted, that when she heard this marriage discussed, she spoke of the
connection with the most supreme contempt; that he is certain of this
fact; and that I was still more contemptuously spoken of than himself. In
a word, he begs me to break off the treaty.  But he has let me go too
far; and now he will make these people my irreconcilable enemies.  This
has been put in his head by some of his flatterers; they do not wish him
to change his way of living; and very few of them would be received by
his wife.”  I tried to soften Madame, and, though I did not venture to
tell her so, I thought her brother right.  She persisted in saying these
were lies, and, on the following Sunday, treated her brother very coldly.
He said nothing to me at that time; if he had, he would have embarrassed
me greatly.  Madame atoned for everything by procuring favours, which
were the means of facilitating the young lady’s marriage with a gentleman
of the Court.  Her conduct, two months after marriage, compelled Madame
to confess that her brother had been perfectly right.

I saw my friend, Madame du Chiron.  “Why,” said she, “is the Marquise so
violent an enemy to the Jesuits?  I assure you she is wrong.  All
powerful as she is, she may find herself the worse for their enmity.” I
replied that I knew nothing about the matter.  “It is, however,
unquestionably a fact; and she does not feel that a word more or less
might decide her fate.”--“How do you mean?”  said I.  “Well, I will
explain myself fully,” said she.  “You know what took place at the time
the King was stabbed: an attempt was made to get her out of the Castle
instantly.  The Jesuits have no other object than the salvation of their
penitents; but they are men, and hatred may, without their being aware of
it, influence their minds, and inspire them with a greater degree of
severity than circumstances absolutely demand.  Favour and partiality
may, on the other hand, induce the confessor to make great concessions;
and the shortest interval may suffice to save a favourite, especially if
any decent pretext can be found for prolonging her stay at Court.”  I
agreed with her in all she said, but I told her that I dared not touch
that string.  On reflecting on this conversation afterwards, I was
forcibly struck with this fresh proof of the intrigues of the Jesuits,
which, indeed, I knew well already.  I thought that, in spite of what I
had replied to Madame du Chiron, I ought to communicate this to Madame de
Pompadour, for the ease of my conscience; but that I would abstain from
making any reflection upon it.  “Your friend, Madame du Chiron,” said
she, “is, I perceive, affiliated to the Jesuits, and what she says does
not originate with herself.  She is commissioned by some reverend father,
and I will know by whom.”  Spies were, accordingly, set to watch her
movements, and they discovered that one Father de Saci, and, still more
particularly, one Father Frey, guided this lady’s conduct.  “What a
pity,” said Madame to me, “that the Abbe Chauvelin cannot know this.” He
was the most formidable enemy of the reverend fathers.  Madame du Chiron
always looked upon me as a Jansenist, because I would not espouse the
interests of the good fathers with as much warmth as she did.

Madame is completely absorbed in the Abbe de Bernis, whom she thinks
capable of anything; she talks of him incessantly.  Apropos, of this
Abbe, I must relate an anecdote, which almost makes one believe in
conjurors.  A year, or fifteen months, before her disgrace, Madame de
Pompadour, being at Fontainebleau, sat down to write at a desk, over
which hung a portrait of the King.  While she was, shutting the desk,
after she had finished writing, the picture fell, and struck her
violently on the head..  The persons who saw the accident were alarmed,
and sent for Dr. Quesnay.  He asked the circumstances of the case, and
ordered bleeding and anodynes.  Just, as she had been bled, Madame de
Brancas entered, and saw us all in confusion and agitation, and Madame
lying on her chaise-longue.  She asked what was the matter, and was told.
After having expressed her regret, and having consoled her, she said, “I
ask it as a favour of Madame, and of the King (who had just come in),
that they will instantly send a courier to the Abbe de Bernis, and that
the Marquise will have the goodness to write a letter, merely requesting
him to inform her what his fortune-tellers told him, and to withhold
nothing from the fear of making her uneasy.”  The thing was, done as she
desired, and she then told us that La Bontemps had predicted, from the
dregs in the coffee-cup, in which she read everything, that the head of
her best friend was in danger, but that no fatal consequences would
ensue.

The next day, the Abbe wrote word that Madame Bontemps also said to him,
“You came into the world almost black,” and that this was the fact.  This
colour, which lasted for some time, was attributed to a picture which
hung at the foot of his, mother’s bed, and which she often looked at.  It
represented a Moor bringing to Cleopatra a basket of flowers, containing
the asp by whose bite she destroyed herself.  He said that she also told
him, “You have a great deal of money about you, but it does not belong to
you;” and that he had actually in his pocket two hundred Louis for the
Duc de La Valliere.  Lastly, he informed us that she said, looking in the
cup, “I see one of your friends--the best--a distinguished lady,
threatened with an accident;” that he confessed that, in spite of all his
philosophy, he turned pale; that she remarked this, looked again into the
cup, and continued, “Her head will be slightly in danger, but of this no
appearance will remain half an hour afterwards.”  It was impossible to
doubt the facts.  They appeared so surprising to the King, that he
desired some inquiry to be made concerning the fortune-teller.  Madame,
however, protected her from the pursuit of the Police.

A man, who was quite as astonishing as this fortune-teller, often visited
Madame de Pompadour.  This was the Comte de St. Germain, who wished to
have it believed that he had lived several centuries.

[St. Germain was an adept--a worthy predecessor of Cagliostro, who
expected to live five hundred years.  The Count de St. Germain pretended
to have already lived two thousand, and, according to him, the account
was still running.  He went so far as to claim the power of transmitting
the gift of long life.  One day, calling upon his servant to, bear
witness to a fact that went pretty far back, the man replied, “I have no
recollection of it, sir; you forget that I have only had the honour of
serving you for five hundred years.”

St. Germain, like all other charlatans of this sort, assumed a theatrical
magnificence, and an air of science calculated to deceive the vulgar.
His best instrument of deception was the phantasmagoria; and as, by means
of this abuse of the science of optics, he called up shades which were
asked for, and almost always recognised, his correspondence with the
other world was a thing proved by the concurrent testimony of numerous
witnesses.

He played the same game in London, Venice, and Holland, but he constantly
regretted Paris, where his miracles were never questioned.

St. Germain passed his latter days at the Court of the Prince of Hesse
Cassel, and died at Plewig, in 1784, in the midst of his enthusiastic
disciples, and to their infinite astonishment at his sharing the common
destiny.]

One day, at her toilet, Madame said to him, in my presence, “What was the
personal appearance of Francis I.?  He was a King I should have
liked.”--“He was, indeed, very captivating,” said St. Germain; and he
proceeded to describe his face and person as one does that of a man one
has accurately observed.  “It is a pity he was too ardent.  I could have
given him some good advice, which would have saved him from all his
misfortunes; but he would not have followed it; for it seems as if a
fatality attended Princes, forcing them to shut their ears, those of the
mind, at least, to the best advice, and especially in the most critical
moments.”--“And the Constable,” said Madame, “what do you say of
him?”--“I cannot say much good or much harm of him,” replied he.  “Was
the Court of Francis I. very brilliant?”--“Very brilliant; but those of
his grandsons infinitely surpassed it.  In the time of Mary Stuart and
Margaret of Valois it was a land of enchantment--a temple, sacred to
pleasures of every kind; those of the mind were not neglected.  The two
Queens were learned, wrote verses, and spoke with captivating grace and
eloquence.”  Madame said, laughing, “You seem to have seen all this.”--“I
have an excellent memory,” said he, “and have read the history of France
with great care.  I sometimes amuse myself, not by making, but by letting
it be believed that I lived in old times.”--“You do not tell me your age,
however, and you give yourself out for very old.  The Comtesse de Gergy,
who was Ambassadress to Venice, I think, fifty years ago, says she knew
you there exactly what you are now.”--“It is true, Madame, that I have
known Madame de Gergy a long time.”--“But, according to what she says,
you would be more than a hundred”--“That is not impossible,” said he,
laughing; “but it is, I allow, still more possible that Madame de Gergy,
for whom I have the greatest respect, may be in her dotage.”--“You have
given her an elixir, the effect of which is surprising. She declares that
for a long time she has felt as if she was only four-and-twenty years of
age; why don’t you give some to the King?”--“Ah! Madame,” said he, with a
sort of terror, “I must be mad to think of giving the King an unknown
drug.”  I went into my room to write down this conversation. Some days
afterwards, the King, Madame de Pompadour, some Lords of the Court, and
the Comte de St. Germain, were talking about his secret for causing the
spots in diamonds to disappear.  The King ordered a diamond of middling
size, which had a spot, to be brought.  It was weighed; and the King said
to the Count, “It is valued at two hundred and forty louis; but it would
be worth four hundred if it had no spot.  Will you try to put a hundred
and sixty louis into my pocket?”  He examined it carefully, and said, “It
may be done; and I will bring it you again in a month.”  At the time
appointed, the Count brought back the diamond without a spot, and gave it
to the King.  It was wrapped in a cloth of amianthus, which he took off.
The King had it weighed, and found it but very little diminished.  The
King sent it to his jeweller by M. de Gontaut, without telling him
anything of what had passed.  The jeweller gave three hundred and eighty
louis for it.  The King, however, sent for it back again, and kept it as
a curiosity.  He could not overcome his surprise, and said that M. de St.
Germain must be worth millions, especially if he had also the secret of
making large diamonds out of a number of small ones.  He neither said
that he had, nor that he had not; but he positively asserted that he
could make pearls grow, and give them the finest water.  The King, paid
him great attention, and so did Madame de Pompadour.  It was from her I
learnt what I have just related. M. Queanay said, talking of the pearls,
“They are produced by a disease in the oyster.  It is possible to know
the cause of it; but, be that as it may, he is not the less a quack,
since he pretends to have the elixir vitae, and to have lived several
centuries.  Our master is, however, infatuated by him, and sometimes
talks of him as if his descent were illustrious.”

I have seen him frequently: he appeared to be about fifty; he was neither
fat nor thin; he had an acute, intelligent look, dressed very simply, but
in good taste; he wore very fine diamonds in his rings, watch, and
snuff-box.  He came, one day, to visit Madame de Pompadour, at a time
when the Court was in full splendour, with knee and shoe-buckles of
diamonds so fine and brilliant that Madame said she did not believe the
King had any equal to them.  He went into the antechamber to take them
off, and brought them to be examined; they were compared with others in
the room, and the Duc de Gontaut, who was present, said they were worth
at least eight thousand louis.  He wore, at the same time, a snuff-box of
inestimable value, and ruby sleeve-buttons, which were perfectly
dazzling.  Nobody could find out by what means this man became so rich
and so remarkable; but the King would not suffer him to be spoken of with
ridicule or contempt.  He was said to be a bastard son of the King of
Portugal.

I learnt, from M. de Marigny, that the relations of the good little
Marechale (de Mirepoix) had been extremely severe upon her, for what they
called the baseness of her conduct, with regard to Madame de Pompadour.
They said she held the stones of the cherries which Madame ate in her
carriage, in her beautiful little hands, and that she sate in the front
of the carriage, while Madame occupied the whole seat in the inside.  The
truth was, that, in going to Crecy, on an insupportably hot day, they
both wished to sit alone, that they might be cooler; and as to the matter
of the cherries, the villagers having brought them some, they ate them to
refresh themselves, while the horses were changed; and the Marechal
emptied her pocket-handkerchief, into which they had both thrown the
cherry-stones, out of the carriage window.  The people who were changing
the horses had given their own version of the affair.





I had, as you know, a very pretty room at Madame’s hotel, whither I
generally went privately.  I had, one day, had visits from two or three
Paris representatives, who told me news; and Madame, having sent for me,
I went to her, and found her with M. de Gontaut.  I could not help
instantly saying to her, “You must be much pleased, Madame, at the noble
action of the Marquis de ------.”  Madame replied, drily, “Hold your
tongue, and listen to what I have to say to you.”  I returned to my
little room, where I found the Comtesse d’Amblimont, to whom I mentioned
Madame’s reception of me.  “I know what is the matter,” said she; “it has
no relation to you.  I will explain it to you.  The Marquis de -------has
told all Paris, that, some days ago, going home at night, alone, and on
foot, he heard cries in a street called Ferou, which is dark, and, in
great part, arched over; that he drew his sword, and went down the
street, in which he saw, by the light of a lamp, a very handsome woman,
to whom some ruffians were offering violence; that he approached, and
that the woman cried out, ‘Save me! save me!’ that he rushed upon the
wretches, two of whom fought him, sword in hand, whilst a third held the
woman, and tried to stop her mouth; that he wounded one in the arm; and
that the ruffians, hearing people pass at the end of the street, and
fearing they might come to his assistance, fled; that he went up to the
lady, who told him that they were not robbers, but villains, one of whom
was desperately in love with her; and that the lady knew not how to
express her gratitude; that she had begged him not to follow her, after
he had conducted her to a fiacre; that she would not tell him her name,
but that she insisted on his accepting a little ring, as a token of
remembrance; and that she promised to see him again, and to tell him her
whole history, if he gave her his address; that he complied with this
request of the lady, whom he represented as a charming person, and who,
in the overflowing of her gratitude, embraced him several times.  This is
all very fine, so far,” said Madame d’Amblimont, “but hear the rest.  The
Marquis de exhibited himself everywhere the next day, with a black ribbon
bound round his arm, near the wrist, in which part he said he had
received a wound.  He related his story to everybody, and everybody
commented upon it after his own fashion.  He went to dine with the
Dauphin, who spoke to him of his bravery, and of his fair unknown, and
told him that he had already complimented the Duc de C---- on the affair.
I forgot to tell you,” continued Madame d’Amblimont, “that, on the very
night of the adventure, he called on Madame d’Estillac, an old gambler,
whose house is open till four in the morning; that everybody there was
surprised at the disordered state in which he appeared; that his bagwig
had fallen off, one skirt of his coat was cut, and his right hand
bleeding.  That they instantly bound it up, and gave him some Rota wine.
Four days ago, the Duc de C---- supped with the King, and sat near M. de
St. Florentin.  He talked to him of his relation’s adventure, and asked
him if he had made any inquiries concerning the lady.  M. de St.
Florentin coldly answered, ‘No!’ and M. de C---- remarked, on asking him
some further questions, that he kept his eyes firmed on his plate,
looking embarrassed, and answered in monosyllables.  He asked him the
reason of this, upon which M. de Florentin told him that it was extremely
distressing to him to see him under such a mistake.  ‘How can you know
that, supposing it to be the fact?’ said M. de ------, ‘Nothing is more
easy to prove,’ replied M. de St. Florentin.  ‘You may imagine that, as
soon as I was informed of the Marquis de ------‘s adventure, I set on
foot inquiries, the result of which was, that, on the night when this
affair was said to have taken place, a party of the watch was set in
ambuscade in this very street, for the purpose of catching a thief who
was coming out of the gaming house; that this party was there four hours,
and heard not the slightest noise.’  M. de C was greatly incensed at this
recital, which M. de St. Florentin ought, indeed, to have communicated to
the King.  He has ordered, or will order, his relation to retire to his
province.

“After this, you will judge, my dear, whether you were very likely to be
graciously received when you went open-mouthed with your compliment to
the Marquise.  This adventure,” continued she, “reminded the King of one
which occurred about fifteen years ago.  The Comte d’E----, who was what
is called ‘enfant d’honneur’ to the Dauphin, and about fourteen years of
age, came into the Dauphin’s apartments, one evening, with his bag-wig
snatched off, and his ruffles torn, and said that, having walked rather
late near the piece of water des Suisses, he had been attacked by two
robbers; that he had refused to give them anything, drawn his sword, and
put himself in an attitude of defence; that one of the robbers was armed
with a sword, the other with a large stick, from which he had received
several blows, but that he had wounded one in the arm, and that, hearing
a noise at that moment, they had fled.  But unluckily for the little
Count, it was known that people were on the spot at the precise time he
mentioned, and had heard nothing.  The Count was pardoned, on account of
his youth.  The Dauphin made him confess the truth, and it was looked
upon as a childish freak to set people talking about him.”

The King disliked the King of Prussia because he knew that the latter was
in the habit of jesting upon his mistress, and the kind of life he led.
It was Frederick’s fault, as I have heard it said, that the King was not
his most steadfast ally and friend, as much as sovereigns can be towards
each other; but the jestings of Frederick had stung him, and made him
conclude the treaty of Versailles.  One day, he entered Madame’s
apartment with a paper in his hand, and said, “The King of Prussia is
certainly a great man; he loves men of talent, and, like Louis XIV., he
wishes to make Europe ring with his favours towards foreign savans. There
is a letter from him, addressed to Milord Marshal, ordering him to
acquaint a ‘superieur’ man of my kingdom (D’Alembert) that he has
granted him a pension;” and, looking at the letter, he read the
following words: “You must know that there is in Paris a man of the
greatest merit, whose fortune is not proportionate to his talents and
character.  I may serve as eyes to the blind goddess, and repair in some
measure the injustice, and I beg you to offer on that account.  I
flatter myself that he will accept this pension because of the pleasure
I shall feel in obliging a man who joins beauty of character to the most
sublime intellectual talents.”

[George Keith, better known under the name of Milord Marshal, was the
eldest son of William Keith, Earl Marshal of Scotland.  He was an avowed
partisan of the Stuarts, and did not lay down the arms he had taken up in
their cause until it became utterly desperate, and drew upon its
defenders useless dangers.  When they were driven from their country, he
renounced it, and took up his residence successively in France, Prussia,
Spain, and Italy.  The delicious country and climate of Valencia he
preferred above any other.

Milord Marshal died in the month of May, 1778.  It was he who said to
Madame Geoffrin, speaking of his brother, who was field-marshal in the
Prussian service, and died on the field of honour, “My brother leaves me
the most glorious inheritance” (he had just laid the whole of Bohemia
under contribution); “his property does not amount to seventy ducats.”  A
eulogium on Milord Marshal, by D’Alembert, is extant.  It is the most
cruelly mangled of all his works, by Linguet]

The King here stopped, on seeing MM. de Ayen and de Gontaut enter, and
then recommenced reading the letter to them, and added, “It was given me
by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, to whom it was confided by Milord
Marshal, for the purpose of obtaining my permission for this sublime
genius to accept the favour.  But,” said the King, “what do you think is
the amount?”  Some said six, eight, ten thousand livres.  “You have not
guessed,” said the King; “it is twelve hundred livres.”--“For sublime
talents,” said the Duc d’Ayen, “it is not much.  But the philosophers
will make Europe resound with this letter, and the King of Prussia will
have the pleasure of making a great noise at little expense.”

The Chevalier de Courten,--[The Chevalier de Courten was a Swiss, and a
man of talent.]--who had been in Prussia, came in, and, hearing this
story told, said, “I have seen what is much better than that: passing
through a village in Prussia, I got out at the posthouse, while I was
waiting for horses; and the postmaster, who was a captain in the Prussian
service, showed me several letters in Frederick’s handwriting, addressed
to his uncle, who was a man of rank, promising him to provide for his
nephews; the provision he made for this, the eldest of these nephews, who
was dreadfully wounded, was the postmastership which he then held.”  M.
de Marigny related this story at Quesnay’s, and added, that the man of
genius above mentioned was D’Alembert, and that the King had permitted
him to accept the pension.  He added, that his sister had suggested to
the King that he had better give D’Alembert a pension of twice the value,
and forbid him to take the King of Prussia’s.  This advice he would not
take, because he looked upon D’Alembert as an infidel.  M. de Marigny
took a copy of the letter, which he lent me.

A certain nobleman, at one time, affected to cast tender glances on
Madame Adelaide.  She was wholly unconscious of it; but, as there are
Arguses at Court, the King was, of course, told of it, and, indeed, he
thought he had perceived it himself.  I know that he came into Madame de
Pompadour’s room one day, in a great passion, and said, “Would you
believe that there is a man in my Court insolent enough to dare to raise
his eyes to one of my daughters?”  Madame had never seen him so
exasperated, and this illustrious nobleman was advised to feign a
necessity for visiting his estates.  He remained there two months. Madame
told me, long after, that she thought that there were no tortures to
which the King would not have condemned any man who had seduced one of
his daughters.  Madame Adelaide, at the time in question, was a charming
person, and united infinite grace, and much talent, to a most agreeable
face.





A courier brought Madame de Pompadour a letter, on reading which she
burst into tears.  It contained the intelligence of the battle of
Rosbach, which M. de Soubise sent her, with all the details.  I heard her
say to the Marechal de Belle-Isle, wiping her eyes, “M. de Soubise is
inconsolable; he does not try to excuse his conduct, he sees nothing but
the disastrous fortune which pursues him.”--“M. de Soubise must, however,
have many things to urge in his own behalf,” said M. de Belle-Isle, “and
so I told the King.”--“It is very noble in you, Marshal, not to suffer an
unfortunate man to be overwhelmed; the public are furious against him,
and what has he done to deserve it?”--“There is not a more honourable nor
a kinder man in the world.  I only fulfil my duty in doing justice to the
truth, and to a man for whom I have the most profound esteem.  The King
will explain to you, Madame, how M. de Soubise was forced to give battle
by the Prince of Sage-Hildbourgshausen, whose troops fled first, and
carried along the French troops.”  Madame would have embraced the old
Marshal if she had dared, she was so delighted with him.

M. de Soubise, having gained a battle, was made Marshal of France: Madame
was enchanted with her friend’s success.  But, either it was unimportant,
or the public were offended at his promotion; nobody talked of it but
Madame’s friends.  This unpopularity was concealed from her, and she said
to Colin, her steward, at her toilet, “Are you not delighted at the
victory M. de Soubise has gained?  What does the public say of it?  He
has taken his revenge well.”  Colin was embarrassed, and knew not what to
answer.  As she pressed him further, he replied that he had been ill, and
had seen nobody for a week.

M. de Marigny came to see me one day, very much out of humour.  I asked
him the cause.  “I have,” said he, “just been intreating my sister not to
make M. le Normand-de-Mezi Minister of the Marine.  I told her that she
was heaping coals of fire upon her own head.  A favourite ought not to
multiply the points of attack upon herself.”  The Doctor entered.  “You,”
 said the Doctor, “are worth your weight in gold, for the good sense and
capacity you have shewn in your office, and for your moderation, but you
will never be appreciated as you deserve; your advice is excellent; there
will never be a ship taken but Madame will be held responsible for it to
the public, and you are very wise not to think of being in the Ministry
yourself.”

One day, when I was at Paris, I went to dine with the Doctor, who
happened to be there at the same time; there were, contrary to his usual
custom, a good many people, and, among others, a handsome young Master of
the Requests, who took a title from some place, the name of which I have
forgotten, but who was a son of M. Turgot, the ‘prevot des marchands’.
They talked a great deal about administration, which was not very amusing
to me; they then fell upon the subject of the love Frenchmen bear to
their Kings.  M. Turgot here joined in the conversation, and said, “This
is not a blind attachment; it is a deeply rooted sentiment, arising from
an indistinct recollection of great benefits.  The French nation--I may
go farther--Europe, and all mankind, owe to a King of France” (I have
forgotten his name)--[Phillip the Long]--“whatever liberty they enjoy. He
established communes, and conferred on an immense number of men a civil
existence.  I am aware that it may be said, with justice, that he served
his own interests by granting these franchises; that the cities paid him
taxes, and that his design was to use them as instruments of weakening
the power of great nobles; but what does that prove, but that this
measure was at once useful, politic, and humane?”  From Kings in general
the conversation turned upon Louis XV., and M. Turgot remarked that his
reign would be always celebrated for the advancement of the sciences, the
progress of knowledge, and of philosophy.  He added that Louis XV.  was
deficient in the quality which Louis XIV.  possessed to excess; that is
to say, in a good opinion of himself; that he was well-informed; that
nobody was more perfectly master of the topography of France; that his
opinion in the Council was always the most judicious; and that it was
much to be lamented that he had not more confidence in himself, or that
he did not rely upon some Minister who enjoyed the confidence of the
nation.  Everybody agreed with him.  I begged M. Quesnay to write down
what young Turgot had said, and showed it to Madame.  She praised this
Master of the Requests greatly, and spoke of him to the King.  “It is a
good breed,” said he.

One day, I went out to walk, and saw, on my return, a great many people
going and coming, and speaking to each other privately: it was evident
that something extraordinary had happened.  I asked a person of my
acquaintance what was the matter.  “Alas!” said he, with tears in his
eyes, “some assassins, who had formed the project of murdering the King,
have inflicted several wounds on a garde-du-corps, who overheard them in
a dark corridor; he is carried to the hospital: and as he has described
the colour of these men’s coats, the Police are in quest of them in all
directions, and some people, dressed in clothes of that colour, are
already arrested.”  I saw Madame with M. de Gontaut, and I hastened home.
She found her door besieged by a multitude of people, and was alarmed:
when she got in, she found the Comte de Noailles.  “What is all this,
Count?”  said she.  He said he was come expressly to speak to her, and
they retired to her closet together.  The conference was not long.  I had
remained in the drawing-room, with Madame’s equerry, the Chevalier de
Solent, Gourbillon, her valet de chambre, and some strangers.  A great
many details were related; but, the wounds being little more than
scratches, and the garde-du-corps having let fall some contradictions, it
was thought that he was an impostor, who had invented all this story to
bring himself into favour.  Before the night was over, this was proved to
be the fact, and, I believe, from his own confession.  The King came,
that evening, to see Madame de Pompadour; he spoke of this occurrence
with great sang froid, and said, “The gentleman who wanted to kill me was
a wicked madman; this is a low scoundrel.”

When he spoke of Damiens, which was only while his trial lasted, he never
called him anything but that gentleman.

I have heard it said that he proposed having him shut up in a dungeon for
life; but that the horrible nature of the crime made the judges insist
upon his suffering all the tortures inflicted upon like occasions.  Great
numbers, many of them women, had a barbarous curiosity to witness the
execution; amongst others, Madame de P------, a very beautiful woman, and
the wife of a Farmer General.  She hired two places at a window for
twelve Louis, and played a game of cards in the room whilst waiting for
the execution to begin.  On this being told to the King, he covered his
eyes with his hands and exclaimed, “Fi, la Vilaine!”  I have been told
that she, and others, thought to pay their court in this way, and
signalise their attachment to the King’s person.

Two things were related to me by M. Duclos at the time of the attempt on
the King’s life.

The first, relative to the Comte de Sponheim, who was the Duc de
Deux-Ponts, and next in succession to the Palatinate and Electorate of
Bavaria.  He was thought to be a great friend to the King, and had made
several long sojourns in France.  He came frequently to see Madame. M.
Duclos told us that the Duc de Deux-Ponts, having learned, at Deux-Ponts,
the attempt on the King’s life, immediately set out in a carriage for
Versailles: “But remark,” said he, “the spirit of ‘courtisanerie’ of a
Prince, who may be Elector of Bavaria and the Palatinate tomorrow. This
was not enough.  When he arrived within ten leagues of Paris, he put on
an enormous pair of jack-boots, mounted a post-horse, and arrived in the
court of the palace cracking his whip.  If this had been real impatience,
and not charlatanism, he would have taken horse twenty leagues from
Paris.”--“I don’t agree with you,” said a gentleman whom I did not know;
“impatience sometimes seizes one towards the end of an undertaking, and
one employs the readiest means then in one’s power. Besides, the Duc de
Deux-Ponts might wish, by showing himself thus on horseback, to serve the
King, to whom he is attached, by proving to Frenchmen how greatly he is
beloved and honoured in other countries.” Duclos resumed: “Well,” said
he, “do you know the story of M. de C-----? The first day the King saw
company, after the attempt of Damiens, M. de C----- pushed so vigorously
through the crowd that he was one of the first to come into the King’s
presence, but he had on so shabby a black coat that it caught the King’s
attention, who burst out laughing, and said, ‘Look at C-----, he has had
the skirt of his coat torn off.’ M. de C----- looked as if he was only
then first conscious of his loss, and said, ‘Sire, there is such a
multitude hurrying to see Your Majesty, that I was obliged to
fight my way through them, and, in the effort, my coat has been
torn.’--‘Fortunately it was not worth much,’ said the Marquis de Souvre,
‘and you could not have chosen a worse one to sacrifice on the
occasion.’”

Madame de Pompadour had been very judiciously advised to get her husband,
M. le Normand, sent to Constantinople, as Ambassador.  This would have a
little diminished the scandal caused by seeing Madame de Pompadour, with
the title of Marquise, at Court, and her husband Farmer General at Paris.
But he was so attached to a Paris life, and to his opera habits, that he
could not be prevailed upon to go.  Madame employed a certain M.
d’Arboulin, with whom she had been acquainted before she was at Court, to
negotiate this affair.  He applied to a Mademoiselle Rem, who had been an
opera-dancer, and who was M. le Normand’s mistress.  She made him very
fine promises; but she was like him, and preferred a Paris life.  She
would do nothing in it.

At the time that plays were acted in the little apartments, I obtained a
lieutenancy for one of my relations, by a singular means, which proves
the value the greatest people set upon the slightest access to the Court.
Madame did not like to ask anything of M. d’Argenson, and, being pressed
by my family, who could not imagine that, situated as I was, it could be
difficult for me to obtain a command for a good soldier, I determined to
go and ask the Comte d’Argenson.  I made my request, and presented my
memorial.  He received me coldly, and gave me vague answers.  I went out,
and the Marquis de V-----, who was in his closet, followed me.  “You wish
to obtain a command,” said he; “there is one vacant, which is promised me
for one of my proteges; but if you will do me a favour in return, or
obtain one for me, I will give it to you.  I want to be a police officer,
and you have it in your power to get me a place.”  I told him I did not
understand the purport of his jest.  “I will tell you,” said he;
“Tartuffe is going to be acted in the cabinets, and there is the part of
a police officer, which only consists of a few lines.  Prevail upon
Madame de Pompadour to assign me that part, and the command is yours.” I
promised nothing, but I related the history to Madame, who said she would
arrange it for me.  The thing was done, and I obtained the command, and
the Marquis de V----- thanked Madame as if she had made him a Duke.

The King was often annoyed by the Parliaments, and said a very remarkable
thing concerning them, which M. de Gontaut repeated to Doctor Quesnay in
my presence.  “Yesterday,” said he, “the King walked up and down the room
with an anxious air.  Madame de Pompadour asked him if he was uneasy
about his health, as he had been, for some time, rather unwell.  ‘No,’
replied he; ‘but I am greatly annoyed by all these remonstrances.’--‘What
can come of them,’ said she, ‘that need seriously disquiet Your Majesty?
Are you not master of the Parliaments, as well as of all the rest of the
kingdom?’--‘That is true,’ said the King; ‘but, if it had not been for
these counsellors and presidents, I should never have been stabbed by
that gentleman’ (he always called Damiens so).  ‘Ah!  Sire,’ cried Madame
de Pompadour.  ‘Read the trial,’ said he.  ‘It was the language of those
gentlemen he names which turned his head.’--‘But,’ said Madame, ‘I have
often thought that, if the Archbishop--[M. de Beaumont]--could be sent to
Rome--’--‘Find anybody who will accomplish that business, and I will give
him whatever he pleases.’”  Quesnay said the King was right in all he had
uttered.  The Archbishop was exiled shortly after, and the King was
seriously afflicted at being driven to take such a step.  “What a pity,”
 he often said, “that so excellent a man should be so obstinate.”--“And so
shallow,” said somebody, one day.  “Hold your tongue,” replied the King,
somewhat sternly.  The Archbishop was very charitable, and liberal to
excess, but he often granted pensions without discernment.

[The following is a specimen of the advantages taken of his natural
kindness.  Madame la Caille, who acted the Duennas at the Opera Comique,
was recommended to him as the mother of a family, who deserved his
protection, The worthy prelate asked what he could do for her.
“Monseigneur,” said the actress, “two words from your hand to the Duc de
Richelieu would induce him to grant me a demi-part.” M. de Beaumont, who
was very little acquainted with the language of the theatre, thought that
a demi-part meant a more liberal portion of the Marshal’s alms, and the
note was written in the most pressing manner.  The Marshal answered, that
he thanked the Archbishop for the interest he took in the Theatre
Italien, and in Madame la Caille, who was a very useful person at that
theatre; that, nevertheless, she had a bad voice; but that the
recommendation of the Archbishop was to be preferred to the greatest
talents, and that the demi-part was granted.]

He granted one of an hundred louis to a pretty woman, who was very poor,
and who assumed an illustrious name, to which she had no right.  The fear
lest she should be plunged into vice led him to bestow such excessive
bounty upon her; and the woman was an admirable dissembler.  She went to
the Archbishop’s, covered with a great hood, and, when she left him, she
amused herself with a variety of lovers.

Great people have the bad habit of talking very indiscreetly before their
servants.  M. de Gontaut once said these words, covertly, as he thought,
to the Duc de ------, “That measures had been taken which would,
probably, have the effect of determining the Archbishop to go to Rome,
with a Cardinal’s hat; and that, if he desired it, he was to have a
coadjutor.”

A very plausible pretext had been found for making this proposition, and
for rendering it flattering to the Archbishop, and agreeable to his
sentiments.  The affair had been very adroitly begun, and success
appeared certain.  The King had the air, towards the Archbishop, of
entire unconsciousness of what was going on.  The negotiator acted as if
he were only following the suggestions of his own mind, for the general
good.  He was a friend of the Archbishop, and was very sure of a liberal
reward.  A valet of the Duc de Gontaut, a very handsome young fellow, had
perfectly caught the sense of what was spoken in a mysterious manner. He
was one of the lovers of the lady of the hundred Louis a year, and had
heard her talk of the Archbishop, whose relation she pretended to be.  He
thought he should secure her good graces by informing her that great
efforts were being made to induce her patron to reside at Rome, with a
view to get him away from Paris.  The lady instantly told the Archbishop,
as she was afraid of losing her pension if he went.  The information
squared so well with the negotiation then on foot, that the Archbishop
had no doubt of its truth.  He cooled, by degrees, in his conversations
with the negotiator, whom he regarded as a traitor, and ended by breaking
with him.  These details were not known till long afterwards.  The lover
of the lady having been sent to the Bicetre, some letters were found
among his papers, which gave a scent of the affair, and he was made to
confess the rest.

In order not to compromise the Duc de Gontaut, the King was told that the
valet had come to a knowledge of the business from a letter which he had
found in his master’s clothes.  The King took his revenge by humiliating
the Archbishop, which he was enabled to do by means of the information he
had obtained concerning the conduct of the lady, his protege.  She was
found guilty of swindling, in concert with her beloved valet; but, before
her punishment was inflicted, the Lieutenant of Police was ordered to lay
before Monseigneur a full account of the conduct of his relation and
pensioner.  The Archbishop had nothing to object to in the proofs which
were submitted to him; he said, with perfect calmness, that she was not
his relation; and, raising his hands to heaven, “She is an unhappy
wretch,” said he, “who has robbed me of the money which was destined for
the poor.  But God knows that, in giving her so large a pension, I did
not act lightly.  I had, at that time, before my eyes the example of a
young woman who once asked me to grant her seventy louis a year,
promising me that she would always live very virtuously, as she had
hitherto done.  I refused her, and she said, on leaving me, ‘I must turn
to the left, Monseigneur, since the way on the right is closed against
me: The unhappy creature has kept her word but too well.  She found means
of establishing a faro-table at her house, which is tolerated; and she
joins to the most profligate conduct in her own person the infamous trade
of a corrupter of youth; her house is the abode of every vice.  Think,
sir, after that, whether it was not an act of prudence, on my part, to
grant the woman in question a pension, suitable to the rank in which I
thought her born, to prevent her abusing the gifts of youth, beauty, and
talents, which she possessed, to her own perdition, and the destruction
of others.”  The Lieutenant of Police told the King that he was touched
with the candour and the noble simplicity of the prelate.  “I never
doubted his virtues,” replied the King, “but I wish he would be quiet.”
 This same Archbishop gave a pension of fifty louis a year to the greatest
scoundrel in Paris.  He is a poet, who writes abominable verses; this
pension is granted on condition that his poems are never printed.  I
learned this fact from M. de Marigny, to whom he recited some of his
horrible verses one evening, when he supped with him, in company with
some people of quality.  He chinked the money in his pocket.  “This is my
good Archbishop’s,” said he, laughing; “I keep my word with him: my poem
will not be printed during my life, but I read it.  What would the good
prelate say if he knew that I shared my last quarter’s allowance with a
charming little opera-dancer?  ‘It is the Archbishop, then, who keeps
me,’ said she to me; ‘Oh, la! how droll that is!’”  The King heard this,
and was much scandalised at it.  “How difficult it is to do good!”  said
he.

The King came into Madame de Pompadour’s room, one day, as she was
finishing dressing.  “I have just had a strange adventure,” said he:
“would you believe that, in going out of my wardroom into my bedroom, I
met a gentleman face to face?”--“My God!  Sire,” cried Madame, terrified.
“It was nothing,” replied he; “but I confess I was greatly surprised: the
man appeared speechless with consternation.  ‘What do you do here?’ said
I, civilly.  He threw himself on his knees, saying, ‘Pardon me, Sire;
and, above all, have me searched: He instantly emptied his pockets
himself; he pulled off his coat in the greatest agitation and terror: at
last he told me that he was cook to -----, and a friend of Beccari, whom
he came to visit; that he had mistaken the staircase, and, finding all
the doors open, he had wandered into the room in which I found him, and
which he would have instantly left: I rang; Guimard came, and was
astonished enough at finding me tete-a-tete with a man in his shirt.  He
begged Guimard to go with him into another room, and to search his whole
person.  After this, the poor devil returned, and put on his coat.
Guimard said to me, ‘He is certainly an honest man, and tells the truth;
this may, besides, be easily ascertained.’  Another of the servants of
the palace came in, and happened to know him.  ‘I will answer for this
good man,’ said, he, ‘who, moreover, makes the best ‘boeuf a carlate’ in
the world.’  As I saw the man was so agitated that he could not stand
steady, I took fifty louis out of my bureau, and said, Here, sir, are
fifty Louis, to quiet your alarms: He went out, after throwing himself at
my feet.”  Madame exclaimed on the impropriety of having the King’s
bedroom thus accessible to everybody.  He talked with great calmness of
this strange apparition, but it was evident that he controlled himself,
and that he had, in fact, been much frightened, as, indeed, he had reason
to be.  Madame highly approved of the gift; and she was the more right in
applauding it, as it was by no means in the King’s usual manner.  M. de
Marigny said, when I told him of this adventure, that he would have
wagered a thousand louis against the King’s making a present of fifty, if
anybody but I had told him of the circumstance.  “It is a singular fact,”
 continued he, “that all of the race of Valois have been liberal to
excess; this is not precisely the case with the Bourbons, who are rather
reproached with avarice.  Henri IV. was said to be avaricious.  He gave
to his mistresses, because he could refuse them nothing; but he played
with the eagerness of a man whose whole fortune depends on the game.
Louis XIV. gave through ostentation.  It is most astonishing,” added he,
“to reflect on what might have happened.  The King might actually have
been assassinated in his chamber, without anybody knowing anything of the
matter and without a possibility of discovering the murderer.”  For more
than a fortnight Madame could not get over this incident.

About that time she had a quarrel with her brother, and both were in the
right.  Proposals were made to him to marry the daughter of one of the
greatest noblemen of the Court, and the King consented to create him a
Duke, and even to make the title hereditary.  Madame was right in wishing
to aggrandise her brother, but he declared that he valued his liberty
above all things, and that he would not sacrifice it except for a person
he really loved.  He was a true Epicurean philosopher, and a man of great
capacity, according to the report of those who knew him well, and judged
him impartially.  It was entirely at his option to have had the reversion
of M. de St. Florentin’s place, and the place of Minister of Marine, when
M. de Machault retired; he said to his sister, at the time, “I spare you
many vexations, by depriving you of a slight satisfaction.  The people
would be unjust to me, however well I might fulfil the duties of my
office.  As to M. de St. Florentin’s place, he may live five-and-twenty
years, so that I should not be the better for it.  Kings’ mistresses are
hated enough on their own account; they need not also draw upon,
themselves the hatred which is directed against Ministers.”  M. Quesnay
repeated this conversation to me.

The King had another mistress, who gave Madame de Pompadour some
uneasiness.  She was a woman of quality, and the wife of one of the most
assiduous courtiers.

A man in immediate attendance on the King’s person, and who had the care
of his clothes, came to me one day, and told me that, as he was very much
attached to Madame, because she was good and useful to the King, he
wished to inform me that, a letter having fallen out of the pocket of a
coat which His Majesty had taken off, he had had the curiosity to read
it, and found it to be from the Comtesse de ----- who had already yielded
to the King’s desires.  In this letter, she required the King to give her
fifty thousand crowns in money, a regiment for one of her relations, and
a bishopric for another, and to dismiss Madame in the space of fifteen
days, etc.  I acquainted Madame with what this man told me, and she acted
with singular greatness of mind.  She said to me, “I ought to inform the
King of this breach of trust of his servant, who may, by the same means,
come to the knowledge of, and make a bad use of, important secrets; but I
feel a repugnance to ruin the man: however, I cannot permit him to remain
near the King’s person, and here is what I shall do: Tell him that there
is a place of ten thousand francs a year vacant in one of the provinces;
let him solicit the Minister of Finance for it, and it shall be granted
to him; but, if he should ever disclose through what interest he has
obtained it, the King shall be made acquainted with his conduct.  By this
means, I think I shall have done all that my attachment and duty
prescribe.  I rid the King of a faithless domestic, without ruining the
individual.”  I did as Madame ordered me: her delicacy and address
inspired me with admiration.  She was not alarmed on account of the lady,
seeing what her pretentions were.  “She drives too quick,” remarked
Madame, “and will certainly be overturned on the road.”  The lady died.

“See what the Court is; all is corruption there, from the highest to the
lowest,” said I to Madame, one day, when she was speaking to me of some
facts, that had come to my knowledge.  “I could tell you many others,”
 replied Madame; “but the little chamber, where you often remain, must
furnish you with a sufficient number.”  This was a little nook, from,
whence I could hear a great part of what passed in Madame’s apartment.
The Lieutenant of Police sometimes came secretly to this apartment, and
waited there.  Three or four persons, of high consideration, also found
their way in, in a mysterious, manner, and several devotees, who were, in
their hearts, enemies of Madame de Pompadour.  But these men had not
petty objects in view: one: required the government of a province;
another, a seat in the Council; a third, a Captaincy of the Guards; and
this man would have obtained it if the Marechale de Mirepoix had not
requested it for her brother, the Prince de Beauvan.  The Chevalier du
Muy was not among these apostates; not even the promise of being High
Constable would have tempted him to make up to Madame, still less to
betray his master, the Dauphin.  This Prince was, to the last degree,
weary of the station he held.  Sometimes, when teased to death by
ambitious people, who pretended to be Catos, or wonderfully devout, he
took part against a Minister against whom he was prepossessed; then
relapsed into his accustomed state of inactivity and ennui.

The King used to say, “My son is lazy; his temper is Polonese--hasty and
changeable; he has no tastes; he cares nothing for hunting, for women, or
for good living; perhaps he imagines that if he were in my place he would
be happy; at first, he would make great changes, create everything anew,
as it were.  In a short time he would be as tired of the rank of King as
he now is of his own; he is only fit to live ‘en philosophe’, with clever
people about him.”  The King added, “He loves what is right; he is truly
virtuous, and does not want under standing.”

M. de St. Germain said, one day, to the King, “To think well of mankind,
one must be neither a Confessor, nor a Minister, nor a Lieutenant of
Police.”--“Nor a King,” said His Majesty.  “Ah! Sire,” replied he, “you
remember the fog we had a few days ago, when we could not see four steps
before us.  Kings are commonly surrounded by still thicker fogs,
collected around them by men of intriguing character, and faithless
Ministers--all, of every class, unite in endeavouring to make things
appear to Kings in any, light but the true one.”  I heard this from the
mouth of the famous Comte de St. Germain, as I was attending upon Madame,
who was ill in bed.  The King was there; and the Count, who was a welcome
visitor, had been admitted.  There were also present, M. de Gontaut,
Madame de Brancas, and the Abbe de Bernis.  I remember that the very same
day, after the Count was gone out, the King talked in a style which gave
Madame great pain.  Speaking of the King of Prussia, he said, “That is a
madman, who will risk all to gain all, and may, perhaps, win the game,
though he has neither religion, morals, nor principles.  He wants to make
a noise in the world, and he will succeed.  Julian, the Apostate, did the
same.”--“I never saw the King so animated before,” observed Madame, when
he was gone out; “and really the comparison with Julian, the Apostate, is
not amiss, considering the irreligion of the King of Prussia.  If he gets
out of his perplexities, surrounded as he is by his enemies, he will be
one of the greatest men in history.”

M. de Bernis remarked, “Madame is correct in her judgment, for she has no
reason to pronounce his praises; nor have I, though I agree with what she
says.”  Madame de Pompadour never enjoyed so much influence as at the
time when M. de Choiseul became one of the Ministry.  From the time of
the Abbe de Bernis she had afforded him her constant support, and he had
been employed in foreign affairs, of which he was said to know but
little.  Madame made the Treaty of Sienna, though the first idea of it
was certainly furnished her by the Abbe.  I have been informed by several
persons that the King often talked to Madame upon this subject; for my
own part, I never heard any conversation relative to it, except the high
praises bestowed by her on the Empress and the Prince de Kaunitz, whom
she had known a good deal of.  She said that he had a clear head, the
head of a statesman.  One day, when she was talking in this strain, some
one tried to cast ridicule upon the Prince on account of the style in
which he wore his hair, and the four valets de chambre, who made the
hair-powder fly in all directions, while Kaunitz ran about that he might
only catch the superfine part of it.  “Aye,” said Madame, “just as
Alcibiades cut off his dog’s tail in order to give the Athenians
something to talk about, and to turn their attention from those things he
wished to conceal.”

Never was the public mind so inflamed against Madame de Pompadour as when
news arrived of the battle of Rosbach.  Every day she received anonymous
letters, full of the grossest abuse; atrocious verses, threats of poison
and assassination.  She continued long a prey to the most acute sorrow,
and could get no sleep but from opiates.  All this discontent was excited
by her protecting the Prince of Soubise; and the Lieutenant of Police had
great difficulty in allaying the ferment of the people.  The King
affirmed that it was not his fault.  M. du Verney was the confidant of
Madame in everything relating to war; a subject which he well understood,
though not a military man by, profession.  The old Marechal de Noailles
called him, in derision, the General of the flour, but Marechal Saxe, one
day, told Madame that Du Verney knew more of military matters than the
old Marshal.  Du Verney once paid a visit to Madame de Pompadour, and
found her in company with the King, the Minister of War, and two
Marshals; he submitted to them the plan of a campaign, which was
generally applauded.  It was through his influence that M. de Richelieu
was appointed to the command of the army, instead of the Marechal
d’Estrdes.  He came to Quesnay two days after, when I was with him. The
Doctor began talking about the art of war, and I remember he said,
“Military men make a great mystery of their art; but what is the reason
that young Princes have always the most brilliant success?  Why, because
they are active and daring.  When Sovereigns command their troops in
person what exploits they perform!  Clearly, because they are at liberty
to run all risks.”  These observations made a lasting impression on my
mind.

The first physician came, one day, to see Madame he was talking of madmen
and madness.  The King was present, and everything relating to disease of
any kind interested him.  The first physician said that he could
distinguish the symptoms of approaching madness six months beforehand.
“Are there any persons about the Court likely to become mad?” said the
King.--“I know one who will be imbecile in less than three months,”
 replied he.  The King pressed him to tell the name.  He excused himself
for some time.  At last he said, “It is M. de Sechelles, the
Controller-General.”--“You have a spite against him,” said Madame,
“because he would not grant what you asked”--“That is true,” said he,
“but though that might possibly incline me to tell a disagreeable truth,
it would not make me invent one.  He is losing his intellects from
debility.  He affects gallantry at his age, and I perceive the connection
in his ideas is becoming feeble and irregular.”--The King laughed; but
three months afterwards he came to Madame, saying, “Sechelles gives
evident proofs of dotage in the Council.  We must appoint a successor to
him.”  Madame de Pompadour told me of this on the way to Choisy.  Some
time afterwards, the first physician came to see Madame, and spoke to her
in private. “You are attached to M. Berryer, Madame,” said he, “and I am
sorry to have to warn you that he will be attacked by madness, or by
catalepsy, before long.  I saw him this morning at chapel, sitting on one
of those very low little chairs, which are only, meant to kneel upon.
His knees touched his chin.  I went to his house after Mass; his eyes
were wild, and when his secretary spoke to him, he said, ‘Hold your
tongue, pen.  A pen’s business is to write, and not to speak.’”  Madame,
who liked the Keeper of the Seals, was very much concerned, and begged
the first physician not to mention what he had perceived.  Four days
after this, M. Berryer was seized with catalepsy, after having talked
incoherently. This is a disease which I did not know even by name, and
got it written down for me.  The patient remains in precisely the same
position in which the fit seizes him; one leg or arm elevated, the eyes
wide open, or just as it may happen.  This latter affair was known to all
the Court at the death of the Keeper of the Seals.

When the Marechal de Belle-Isle’s son was killed in battle, Madame
persuaded the King to pay his father a visit.  He was rather reluctant,
and Madame said to him, with an air half angry, half playful:

--------“Barbare! don’t l’orgueil
Croit le sang d’un sujet trop pays d’un coup d’oeil.”

The King laughed, and said, “Whose fine verses are those?”--“Voltaire’s,”
 said Madame ------.

“As barbarous as I am, I gave him the place of gentleman in ordinary, and
a pension,” said the King.

The King went in state to call on the Marshal, followed by all the Court;
and it certainly appeared that this solemn visit consoled the Marshal for
the loss of his son, the sole heir to his name.

When the Marshal died, he was carried to his house on a common
hand-barrow, covered with a shabby cloth.  I met the body.  The bearers
were laughing and singing.  I thought it was some servant, and asked who
it was.  How great was my surprise at learning that these were the
remains of a man abounding in honours and in riches.  Such is the Court;
the dead are always in fault, and cannot be put out of sight too soon.

The King said, “M. Fouquet is dead, I hear.”--“He was no longer Fouquet,”
 replied the Duc d’Ayen; “Your Majesty had permitted him to change that
name, under which, however, he acquired all his reputation.”  The King
shrugged his shoulders.  His Majesty had, in fact, granted him letters
patent, permitting him not to sign Fouquet during his Ministry.  I heard
this on the occasion in question.  M. de Choiseul had the war department
at his death.  He was every day more and more in favour.

Madame treated him with greater distinction than any previous Minister,
and his manners towards her were the most agreeable it is possible to
conceive, at once respectful and gallant.  He never passed a day without
seeing her.  M. de Marigny could not endure M. de Choiseul, but he never
spoke of him, except to his intimate friends.  Calling, one day, at
Quesnay’s, I found him there.  They were talking of M. de Choiseul.  “He
is a mere ‘petit maitre’,” said the Doctor, “and, if he were handsome
just fit to be one of Henri the Third’s favourites.”  The Marquis de
Mirabeau and M. de La Riviere came in.  “This kingdom,” said Mirabeau,
“is in a deplorable state.  There is neither national energy, nor the
only substitute for it--money.”--“It can only be regenerated,” said La
Riviere, “by a conquest, like that of China, or by some great internal
convulsion; but woe to those who live to see that!  The French people do
not do things by halves.”  These words made me tremble, and I hastened
out of the room.  M. de Marigny did the same, though without appearing at
all affected by what had been said.  “You heard De La Riviere,” said
he,--“but don’t be alarmed, the conversations that pass at the Doctor’s
are never repeated; these are honourable men, though rather chimerical.
They know not where to stop.  I think, however, they are in the right
way; only, unfortunately, they go too far.”  I wrote this down
immediately.

The Comte de St. Germain came to see Madame de Pompadour, who was ill,
and lay on the sofa.  He shewed her a little box, containing topazes,
rubies, and emeralds.  He appeared to have enough to furnish a treasury.
Madame sent for me to see all these beautiful things.  I looked at them
with an air of the utmost astonishment, but I made signs to Madame that I
thought them all false.  The Count felt for something in his pocketbook,
about twice as large as a spectacle-case, and, at length, drew out two or
three little paper packets, which he unfolded, and exhibited a superb
ruby.  He threw on the table, with a contemptuous air, a little cross of
green and white stones.  I looked at it and said, “That is not to be
despised.”  I put it on, and admired it greatly.  The Count begged me to
accept it.  I refused--he urged me to take it.  Madame then refused it
for me.  At length, he pressed it upon me so warmly that Madame, seeing
that it could not be worth above forty Louis, made me a sign to accept
it.  I took the cross, much pleased at the Count’s politeness; and, some
days after, Madame presented him with an enamelled box, upon which was
the portrait of some Grecian sage (whose name I don’t recollect), to whom
she compared him.  I skewed the cross to a jeweller, who valued it at
sixty-five Louis.  The Count offered to bring Madame some enamel
portraits, by Petitot, to look at, and she told him to bring them after
dinner, while the King was hunting.  He shewed his portraits, after which
Madame said to him, “I have heard a great deal of a charming story you
told two days ago, at supper, at M. le Premier’s, of an occurrence you
witnessed fifty or sixty years ago.”  He smiled and said, “It is rather
long.”--“So much the better,” said she, with an air of delight.  Madame
de Gontaut and the ladies came in, and the door was shut; Madame made a
sign to me to sit down behind the screen.  The Count made many apologies
for the ennui which his story would, perhaps, occasion.  He said,
“Sometimes one can tell a story pretty well; at other times it is quite a
different thing.”

“At the beginning of this century, the Marquis de St. Gilles was
Ambassador from Spain to the Hague.  In his youth he had been
particularly intimate with the Count of Moncade, a grandee of Spain, and
one of the richest nobles of that country.  Some months after the
Marquis’s arrival at the Hague, he received a letter from the Count,
entreating him, in the name of their former friendship, to render him the
greatest possible service.  ‘You know,’ said he, ‘my dear Marquis, the
mortification I felt that the name of Moncade was likely to expire with
me.  At length, it pleased heaven to hear my prayers, and to grant me a
son: he gave early promise of dispositions worthy of his birth, but he,
some time since, formed an unfortunate and disgraceful attachment to the
most celebrated actress of the company of Toledo.  I shut my eyes to this
imprudence on the part of a young man whose conduct had, till then,
caused me unmingled satisfaction.  But, having learnt that he was so
blinded by passion as to intend to marry this girl, and that he had even
bound himself by a written promise to that effect, I solicited the King
to have her placed in confinement.  My son, having got information of the
steps I had taken, defeated my intentions by escaping with the object of
his passion.  For more than six months I have vainly endeavoured to
discover where he has concealed himself, but I have now some reason to
think he is at the Hague.  The Count earnestly conjured the Marquis to
make the most rigid search, in order to discover his son’s retreat, and
to endeavour to prevail upon him to return to his home.  ‘It is an act of
justice,’ continued he, ‘to provide for the girl, if she consents to
give up the written promise of marriage which she has received, and I
leave it to your discretion to do what is right for her, as well as to
determine the sum necessary to bring my son to Madrid in a manner
suitable to his condition.  I know not,’ concluded he, ‘whether you are a
father; if you are, you will be able to sympathise in my anxieties.’ The
Count subjoined to this letter an exact description of his son, and the
young woman by whom he was accompanied.

“On the receipt of this letter, the Marquis lost not a moment in sending
to all the inns in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague, but in vain--he
could find no trace of them.  He began to despair of success, when the
idea struck him that a young French page of his, remarkable for his
quickness and intelligence, might be employed with advantage.  He
promised to reward him handsomely if he succeeded in finding the young
woman, who was the cause of so much anxiety, and gave him the description
of her person.  The page visited all the public places for many days,
without success; at length, one evening, at the play, he saw a young man
and woman, in a box, who attracted his attention.  When he saw that they,
perceived he was looking at them, and withdrew to the back of the box to
avoid his observation, he felt confident that they were the objects of
his search.  He did not take his eyes from the bog, and watched every
movement in it.  The instant the performance ended, he was in the passage
leading from the boxes to the door, and he remarked that the young man,
who, doubtless, observed the dress he wore, tried to conceal himself, as
he passed him, by putting his handkerchief before his face.  He followed
him, at a distance, to the inn called the Vicomte de Turenne, which he
saw him and the woman enter; and, being now certain of success, he ran to
inform the Ambassador.  The Marquis de St. Gilles immediately repaired to
the inn, wrapped in a cloak, and followed by his page and two servants.
He desired the landlord to show him to the room of a young man and woman,
who had lodged for some time in his house.  The landlord, for some time,
refused to do so, unless the Marquis would give their name.  The page
told him to take notice that he was speaking to the Spanish Ambassador,
who had strong reasons for wishing to see the persons in question.  The
innkeeper said they wished not to be known, and that they had absolutely
forbidden him to admit anybody into their apartment who did not ask for
them by name; but that, since the Ambassador desired it, he would show
him their room.  He then conducted them up to a dirty, miserable garret.
He knocked at the door, and waited for some time; he then knocked again
pretty, loudly, upon which the door was half-opened.  At the sight of the
Ambassador and his suite, the person who opened it immediately closed it
again, exclaiming that they, had made a mistake.  The Ambassador pushed
hard against him, forced his way, in, made a sign to his people to wait
outside, and remained in the room.  He saw before him a very handsome
young man, whose appearance perfectly, corresponded with the description,
and a young woman, of great beauty, and remarkably fine person, whose
countenance, form, colour of the hair, etc., were also precisely those
described by the Count of Moncade.  The young man spoke first.  He
complained of the violence used in breaking into the apartment of a
stranger, living in a free country, and under the protection of its laws.
The Ambassador stepped forward to embrace him, and said, ‘It is useless
to feign, my dear Count; I know you, and I do not come here--to give pain
to you or to this lady, whose appearance interests me extremely.’  The
young man replied that he was totally mistaken; that he was not a Count,
but the son of a merchant of Cadiz; that the lady was his wife; and, that
they were travelling for pleasure.  The Ambassador, casting his eyes
round the miserably furnished room, which contained but one bed, and some
packages of the shabbiest kind, lying in disorder about the room, ‘Is
this, my dear child (allow me to address you by a title which is
warranted by my tender regard for your father), is this a fit residence
for the son of the Count of Moncade?’  The young man still protested
against the use of any such language, as addressed to him.  At length,
overcome by the entreaties of the Ambassador, he confessed, weeping, that
he was the son of the Count of Moncade, but declared that nothing should
induce him to return to his father, if he must abandon a woman he adored.
The young woman burst into tears, and threw herself at the feet of the
Ambassador, telling him that she would not be the cause of the ruin of
the young Count; and that generosity, or rather, love, would enable her
to disregard her own happiness, and, for his sake, to separate herself
from him.  The Ambassador admired her noble disinterestedness.  The young
man, on the contrary, received her declaration with the most desperate
grief.  He reproached his mistress, and declared that he would never
abandon so estimable a creature, nor suffer the sublime generosity of her
heart to be turned against herself.  The Ambassador told him that the
Count of Moncade was far from wishing to render her miserable, and that
he was commissioned to provide her with a sum sufficient to enable her to
return into Spain, or to live where she liked.  Her noble sentiments, and
genuine tenderness, he said, inspired him with the greatest interest for
her, and would induce him to go to the utmost limits of his powers, in
the sum he was to give her; that he, therefore, promised her ten thousand
florins, that is to say, about twelve hundred Louis, which would be given
her the moment she surrendered the promise of marriage she had received,
and the Count of Moncade took up his abode in the Ambassador’s house, and
promised to return to Spain.  The young woman seemed perfectly
indifferent to the sum proposed, and wholly absorbed in her lover, and in
the grief of leaving him.  She seemed insensible to everything but the
cruel sacrifice which her reason, and her love itself, demanded.  At
length, drawing from a little portfolio the promise of marriage, signed
by the Count, ‘I know his heart too well,’ said she, ‘to need it.’  Then
she kissed it again and again, with a sort of transport, and delivered it
to the Ambassador, who stood by, astonished at the grandeur of soul he
witnessed.  He promised her that he would never cease to take the
liveliest interest in her fate, and assured the Count of his father’s
forgiveness.  ‘He will receive with open arms,’ said he, ‘the prodigal
son, returning to the bosom of his distressed family; the heart of a
father is an exhaustless mine of tenderness.  How great will be the
felicity of my friend on the receipt of these tidings, after his long
anxiety and affliction; how happy do I esteem myself, at being the
instrument of that felicity?’  Such was, in part, the language of the
Ambassador, which appeared to produce a strong impression on the young
man.  But, fearing lest, during the night, love should regain all his
power, and should triumph over the generous resolution of the lady, the
Marquis pressed the young Count to accompany him to his hotel.  The
tears, the cries of anguish, which marked this cruel separation, cannot
be described; they deeply touched the heart of the Ambassador, who
promised to watch over the young lady.  The Count’s little baggage was
not difficult to remove, and, that very evening, he was installed in the
finest apartment of the Ambassador’s house.  The Marquis was overjoyed at
having restored to the illustrious house of Moncade the heir of its
greatness, and of its magnificent domains.  On the following morning, as
soon as the young Count was up, he found tailors, dealers in cloth, lace,
stuffs, etc., out of which he had only to choose.  Two valets de chambre,
and three laquais, chosen by the Ambassador for their intelligence and
good conduct, were in waiting in his antechamber, and presented
themselves, to receive his orders.  The Ambassador shewed the young Count
the letter he had just written to his father, in which he congratulated
him on possessing a son whose noble sentiments and striking qualities
were worthy of his illustrious blood, and announced his speedy return.
The young lady was not forgotten; he confessed that to her generosity he
was partly indebted for the submission of her lover, and expressed his
conviction that the Count would not disapprove the gift he had made her,
of ten thousand florins.  That sum was remitted, on the same day, to this
noble and interesting girl, who left the Hague without delay.  The
preparations for the Count’s journey were made; a

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