As we were going back to Paris I left Madame d’Urfe, and walked to the Porte St. Denis to see my brother.  He and his wife received me with cries of joy.  I thought the wife very pretty but very wretched, for Providence had not allowed my brother to prove his manhood, and she was unhappily in love with him.  I say unhappily, because her love kept her faithful to him, and if she had not been in love she might easily have found a cure for her misfortune as her husband allowed her perfect liberty.  She grieved bitterly, for she did not know that my brother was impotent, and fancied that the reason of his abstention was that he did not return her love; and the mistake was an excusable one, for he was like a Hercules, and indeed he was one, except where it was most to be desired.  Her grief threw her into a consumption of which she died five or six years later.  She did not mean her death to be a punishment to her husband, but we shall see that it was so.

The next day I called on Madame Varnier to give her Madame Morin’s letter.  I was cordially welcomed, and Madame Varnier was kind enough to say that she had rather see me than anybody else in the world; her niece had told her such strange things about me that she had got quite curious.  This, as is well known, is a prevailing complaint with women.

“You shall see my niece,” she said, “and she will tell you all about herself.”

She wrote her a note, and put Madame Morin’s letter under the same envelope.

“If you want to know what my niece’s answer is,” said Madame Varnier, “you must dine with me.”

I accepted the invitation, and she immediately told her servant that she was not at home to anyone.

The small messenger who had taken the note to Passi returned at four o’clock with the following epistle: 

“The moment in which I see the Chevalier de Seingalt once more will be one of the happiest of my life.  Ask him to be at your house at ten o’clock the day after tomorrow, and if he can’t come then please let me know.”

After reading the note and promising to keep the appointment, I left Madame Varnier and called on Madame de Rumain, who told me I must spend a whole day with her as she had several questions to put to my oracle.

Next day Madame d’Urfe told me the reply she had from the Duc de Choiseul, when she told him that she had seen the Comte de St. Germain in the Bois du Boulogne.

“I should not be surprised,” said the minister, “considering that he spent the night in my closet.”

The duke was a man of wit and a man of the world.  He only kept secrets when they were really important ones; very different from those make-believe diplomatists, who think they give themselves importance by making a mystery of trifles of no consequence.  It is true that the Duc de Choiseul very seldom thought anything of great importance; and, in point of fact, if there were less intrigue and more truth about diplomacy (as there ought to be), concealment would be rather ridiculous than necessary.