spring from?  From tradesmen; even tradesmen they were themselves.  Yours was the son of a dealer in fresh fish at the markets, and mine of a pedlar, or, perhaps, worse.  Gentlemen,” said he, addressing the company, “have we not reason to think our fortune prodigious—­the Marechal and I?” The Marechal would have liked to strangle M. de Gesvres, or to see him dead—­but what can be done with a man who, in order to say something cutting to you, says it to himself first?  Everybody was silent, and all eyes were lowered.  Many, however, were not sorry to see M. de Villeroy so pleasantly humiliated.  The King came and put an end to the scene, which was the talk of the Court for several days.

Omissions must be repaired as soon as they are perceived.  Other matters have carried me away.  At the commencement of April, Ticquet, Counsellor at the Parliament, was assassinated in his own house; and if he did not die, it was not the fault of his porter, or of the soldier who had attempted to kill him, and who left him for dead, disturbed by a noise they heard.  This councillor, who was a very poor man, had complained to the King, the preceding year, of the conduct of his wife with Montgeorges, captain in the Guards, and much esteemed.  The King prohibited Montgeorges from seeing the wife of the councillor again.

Such having been the case, when the crime was attempted, suspicion fell upon Montgeorges and the wife of Ticquet, a beautiful, gallant, and bold woman, who took a very high tone in the matter.  She was advised to fly, and one of my friends offered to assist her to do so, maintaining that in all such cases it is safer to be far off than close at hand.  The woman would listen to no such advice, and in a few days she was no longer able.  The porter and the soldier were arrested and tortured, and Madame Ticquet, who was foolish enough to allow herself to be arrested, also underwent the same examination, and avowed all.  She was condemned to lose her head, and her accomplice to be broken on the wheel.  Montgeorges managed so well, that he was not legally criminated.  When Ticquet heard the sentence, he came with all his family to the King, and sued for mercy.  But the King would not listen to him, and the execution took place on Wednesday, the 17th of June, after mid-day, at the Greve.  All the windows of the Hotel de Ville, and of the houses in the Place de Greve, in the streets that lead to it from the Conciergerie of the palace where Madame Ticquet was confined, were filled with spectators, men and women, many of title and distinction.  There were even friends of both sexes of this unhappy woman, who felt no shame or horror in going there.  In the streets the crowd was so great that it could not be passed through.  In general, pity was felt for the culprit; people hoped she would be pardoned, and it was because they hoped so, that they went to see her die.  But such is the world; so unreasoning, and so little in accord with itself.