On leaving Mademoiselle, he came to my apartment and told me about all this nonsense.  I then informed him of what I had heard by letter the day before.  Lauzun, while still carrying on with the fastest ladies of the Court and the town, had just wheedled the Princess into making him a present of twenty millions,—­a most extravagant gift.

“This is too much!” exclaimed the King; and he at once caused a letter to be despatched to Mademoiselle and her lover, telling them that their intimacy must cease, and that things must go no farther.

But the audacious Lauzun found means to suborn a well-meaning simpleton of a priest, who married them secretly the very same day.

The King’s indignation and resentment may well be imagined.  He had his captain of the guard arrested and sent as a prisoner to Pignerol.

On this occasion, M. de Lauzun complained bitterly of me; he invented the most absurd tales about me, even saying that he had struck me in my own apartments, after taunting me to my face with “our old intimacy.”

That is false; he reproached me with nothing, for there was nothing to reproach.  Shortly after the Princess’s grand scene, he came and begged me to intercede on his behalf.  I only made a sort of vague promise, and he knew well enough that, in the great world, a vague promise is the same as a refusal.

For more than six months I had to stanch the tears and assuage the grief of Mademoiselle.  So tiresome to me did this prove, that she alone well-nigh sufficed to make me quit the Court.

Such sorrowing and chagrin made her lose the little beauty that still remained to her; nothing seemed more incongruous and ridiculous than to hear this elderly grand lady talking perpetually about “her dearest darling, the prisoner.”

At the time I write he is at Pignerol; his bad disposition is forever getting him into trouble.  She sends him lots of money unknown to the King, who generally knows everything.  All this money he squanders or gambles away, and when funds are low, says, “The old lady will send us some.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Hyde, the Chancellor.—­Misfortune Not Always Misfortune.—­Prince Comnenus.—­The King at Petit-Bourg.—­His Incognito.—­Who M. de Vivonne Really Was.

The castle of Petit-Bourg, of which the King made me a present, is situate on a height overlooking the Seine, whence one may get the loveliest of views.  So pleasant did I find this charming abode, that I repaired thither as often as possible, and stayed for five or six days.  One balmy summer night, I sat in my dressing-gown at the central balcony, watching the stars, as was my wont, asking myself whether I should not be a thousand times happier if I should pass my life in a retreat like this, and so have time to contemplate the glorious works of Nature, and to prepare myself for that separation which sooner or