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 l’ecarlate 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