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.” 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