“Go on,” said I, “treat your enemies well, and rail at your friends.  I am delighted to see you angry.  It is a sign that I have touched the sore point, when you press the finger on it the patient cries.  I should like to squeeze out all the matter, and after that you would be quite another man, and differently esteemed.”

He grumbled a little more, and then calmed down.  This was one of two occasions only, on which he was ever really angry with me.

Two or three years after the death of the King, I was chatting in one of the grand rooms of the Tuileries, where the Council of the Regency was, according to custom, soon to be held, and M. d’Orleans at the other end was talking to some one in a window recess.  I heard myself called from mouth to mouth, and was told that M. d’Orleans wished to speak to me.  This often happened before the Council.  I went therefore to the window where he was standing.  I found a serious bearing, a concentrated manner, an angry face, and was much surprised.

“Monsieur,” said he to me at once, “I have a serious complaint against you; you, whom I have always regarded as my best of friends.”

“Against me!  Monsieur!” said I, still more surprised.  “What is the matter, then, may I ask?”

“The matter!” he replied with a mien still more angry; “something you cannot deny; verses you have made against me.”

“I—­verses!” was my reply.  “Why, who the devil has been telling you such nonsense?  You have been acquainted with me nearly forty years, and do you not know, that never in my life have I been able to make a single verse—­much less verses?”

“No, no, by Heaven,” replied he, “you cannot deny these;” and forthwith he began to sing to me a street song in his praise, the chorus of which was:  ‘Our Regent is debonnaire, la la, he is debonnaire,’ with a burst of laughter.

“What!” said I, “you remember it still!” and smiling, I added also, “since you are revenged for it, remember it in good earnest.”  He kept on laughing a long time before going to the Council, and could not hinder himself.  I have not been afraid to write this trifle, because it seems to me that it paints the man.

M. d’Orleans loved liberty, and as much for others as for himself.  He extolled England to me one day on this account, as a country where there are no banishments, no lettres de cachet, and where the King may close the door of his palace to anybody, but can keep no one in prison; and thereupon related to me with enjoyment, that besides the Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles the Second had many subordinate mistresses; that the Grand Prieur, young and amiable in those days, driven out of France for some folly, had gone to England to pass his exile and had been well received by the King.  By way of thanks, he seduced one of those mistresses, by whom the King was then so smitten, that he sued for mercy, offered money to the Grand Prieur, and undertook to obtain