suffered him to be so much with her if he had conceived the least suspicion of the kind.  The King persisted, and told him he was wrong to endeavour to conceal a fact which was unquestionable.  It was rumoured, also, that the Abbe de Bernis had been a favoured lover of hers.  The said Abbe was rather a coxcomb; he had a handsome face, and wrote poetry.  Madame de Pompadour was the theme of his gallant verses.  He sometimes received the compliments of his friends upon his success with a smile which left some room for conjecture, although he denied the thing in words.  It was, for some time, reported at Court that she was in love with the Prince de Beauvau:  he is a man distinguished for his gallantries, his air of rank and fashion, and his high play; he is brother to the little Marechale:  for all these reasons, Madame is very civil to him, but there is nothing marked in her behaviour.  She knows, besides, that he is in love with a very agreeable woman.

Now that I am on the subject of lovers, I cannot avoid speaking of M. de Choiseul.  Madame likes him better than any of those I have just mentioned, but he is not her lover.  A lady, whom I know perfectly well, but whom I do not choose to denounce to Madame, invented a story about them, which was utterly false.  She said, as I have good reason to believe, that one day, hearing the King coming, I ran to Madame’s closet door; that I coughed in a particular manner; and that the King having, happily, stopped a moment to talk to some ladies, there was time to adjust matters, so that Madame came out of the closet with me and M. de Choiseul, as if we had been all three sitting together.  It is very true that I went in to carry something to Madame, without knowing that the King was come, and that she came out of the closet with M. de Choiseul, who had a paper in his hand, and that I followed her a few minutes after.  The King asked M. de Choiseul what that paper was which he had in his hand.  He replied that it contained the remonstrance from the Parliament.

Three or four ladies witnessed what I now relate, and as, with the exception of one, they were all excellent women, and greatly attached to Madame, my suspicions could fall on none but the one in question, whom I will not name, because her brother has always treated me with great kindness.  Madame de Pompadour had a lively imagination and great sensibility, but nothing could exceed the coldness of her temperament.  It would, besides, have been extremely difficult for her, surrounded as she was, to keep up an intercourse of that kind with any man.  It is true that this difficulty would have been diminished in the case of an all-powerful Minister, who had constant pretexts for seeing her in private.  But there was a much more decisive fact—­M. de Choiseul had a charming mistress—­the Princesse de R——­, and Madame knew it, and often spoke of her.  He had, besides, some remains of liking for the Princesse de Kinski, who followed him from Vienna.  It is