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! dont l’orgueil
  Croit le sang d’un sujet trop paye 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.