My judgment coincided with that of the king, who was pleased with the sacrifice I had made.  He said on this occasion, “You are to be the chief”; and he related these circumstances to my colleague, who became, in return for the service I had done him, my good friend.  The consideration shown to me by the Duc de Lenoncourt set the tone of that which I met with in society.  To have it said, “The king takes an interest in the young man; that young man has a future, the king likes him,” would have served me in place of talents; and it now gave to the kindly welcome accorded to youth a certain respect that is only given to power.  In the salon of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt and also at the house of my sister who had just married the Marquis de Listomere, son of the old lady in the Ile St. Louis, I gradually came to know the influential personages of the Faubourg St. Germain.

Henriette herself put me at the heart of the circle then called “le Petit Chateau” by the help of her great-aunt, the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, to whom she wrote so warmly in my behalf that the princess immediately sent for me.  I cultivated her and contrived to please her, and she became, not my protectress but a friend, in whose kindness there was something maternal.  The old lady took pains to make me intimate with her daughter Madame d’Espard, with the Duchesse de Langeais, the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, women who held the sceptre of fashion, and who were all the more gracious to me because I made no pretensions and was always ready to be useful and agreeable to them.  My brother Charles, far from avoiding me, now began to lean upon me; but my rapid success roused a secret jealousy in his mind which in after years caused me great vexation.  My father and mother, surprised by a triumph so unexpected, felt their vanity flattered, and received me at last as a son.  But their feeling was too artificial, I might say false, to let their present treatment have much influence upon a sore heart.  Affectations stained with selfishness win little sympathy; the heart abhors calculations and profits of all kinds.

I wrote regularly to Henriette, who answered by two letters a month.  Her spirit hovered over me, her thoughts traversed space and made the atmosphere around me pure.  No woman could captivate me.  The king noticed my reserve, and as, in this respect, he belonged to the school of Louis XV., he called me, in jest, Mademoiselle de Vandenesse; but my conduct pleased him.  I am convinced that the habit of patience I acquired in my childhood and practised at Clochegourde had much to do in my winning the favor of the king, who was always most kind to me.  He no doubt took a fancy to read my letters, for he soon gave up his notion of my life as that of a young girl.  One day when the duke was on duty, and I was writing at the king’s dictation, the latter suddenly remarked, in that fine, silvery voice of his, to which he could give, when he chose, the biting tone of epigram:—­