The Duchesse du Maine said openly that she should never be happy until she had made an end of my son.  When her mother reproached her with it, she did not deny it, but only replied, “One says things in a passion which one does not mean to do.”

Although the plot has been discovered, the conspirators have not yet been all taken.  My son says, jokingly, “I have hold of the monster’s head and tail, but I have not yet got his body”

I can guess how it happened that the mercantile letters stated my son to have been arrested; it is because the conspirators intended to have done so, and two days later it would have taken place.  It must have been persons of this party, therefore, who wrote to England.

When Schlieben was seized, he said, “If Monsieur the Regent does not take pity upon me, I am ruined.”

He was for a long time at the Spanish Court, where he was protected by the Princesse des Ursins.  He has some wit, can chatter well, and is an excellent spy for such a lady.  The persons who had arrested him took him to Paris by the diligence, without saying a word.  On reaching Paris the diligence was ordered to the Bastille; the poor travellers not knowing why, were in a great fright, and expected all to be locked up, but were not a little pleased at being set free.  Sandrazky is not very clever; he is a Silesian.  He married an Englishwoman, whose fortune he soon dissipated, for he is a great gambler.

The Duchesse du Maine has fallen sick with rage, and that old Maintenon is said to be afflicted by the affair more than any other person.  It was by her fault that they fell into this scrape, for she put it into their heads that it was unjust they should not reign, and that the kingdom belonged as much to them as King Solomon’s did to him.

Madame d’Orleans weeps for her brother by day and night.

They tried to arrest the Duc de Saint-Aignan at Pampeluna; but he effected his escape with his wife, and in disguise.

When they carried away the Duc du Maine, he said, “I shall soon return, for my innocence will be speedily manifested; but I only speak for myself, my wife may not come back quite so soon.”

Madame d’Orleans cannot believe that her brother has been engaged in a conspiracy; she says it must have been his wife who acted in his name.  The Princess, on the other hand, believes that her daughter is innocent, and that the Duc du Maine alone has carried on the plot.

The factum is not badly drawn up.  Our priest can write well enough when he likes; he drew it up, and my son corrected it.

The more the affair is examined, the more clearly does the guilt of the Duke and Duchess appear; for three days ago, Malezieux, who is in the Bastille, gave up his writing-desk.  The first thing that was found in it was a projet, which Malezieux had written at the Duchess’s bedside, and which Cardinal de Polignac had corrected with his own hand.  Malezieux pretends that it is a Spanish letter, addressed to the Duchess, and that he had translated it for her, with the assistance of the Cardinal de Polignac; and yet the letters of Alberoni to the Prince de Cellamara refer so directly to this projet that it is easy to see that they spring from the same source.