Biron, shrugging his shoulders, said all that was very good, but that if I could find a letter from the Marquis de Ruffec it would be much better; adding, that if one turned up and I sent it to him, he would take care that it reached M. le Duc d’Orleans, at table, in spite of the privacy of his suppers.  I did not wish to return to the Palais Royal to make a scene there, and dismissed Biron.  Fortunately, Madame de Saint-Simon came in some time after.  I related to her this adventure.  She found the last letter of the Marquis de Ruffec, and we sent it to Biron.  It reached the table as he had promised.  M. le Duc d’Orleans seized it with eagerness.  The joke is that he did not know the handwriting.  Not only did he look at the letter, but he read it; and as he found it diverting, regaled his company with it; it became the topic of their discourse, and entirely removed his suspicions.  Upon my return from La Ferme, I found him ashamed of himself, and I rendered him still more so by what I said to him on the subject.

I learnt afterwards that this Madrid letter, and others that followed, came from a sham Marquis de Ruffec, that is to say, from the son of one of Madame’s porters, who passed himself off as my son.  He pretended that he had quarrelled with me, and wrote to Madame de Saint-Simon, begging her to intercede for him; and all this that his letters might be seen, and that he might reap substantial benefits from his imposture in the shape of money and consideration.  He was a well-made fellow, had much address and effrontery, knew the Court very well, and had taken care to learn all about our family, so as to speak within limits.  He was arrested at Bayonne, at the table of Dadoncourt, who commanded there, and who suddenly formed the resolution, suspecting him not to be a gentleman, upon seeing him eat olives with a fork!  When in gaol he confessed who he was.  He was not new at the trade and was confined some little time.

CHAPTER LXXI

But to return to M. le Duc d’Orleans.

His curiosity, joined to a false idea of firmness and courage, had early led him to try and raise the devil and make him speak.  He left nothing untried, even the wildest reading, to persuade himself there was no God; and yet believed meanwhile in the devil, and hoped to see him and converse with him!  This inconsistency is hard to understand, and yet is extremely common.  He worked with all sorts of obscure people; and above all with Mirepoix, sublieutenant of the Black Musketeers, to find out Satan.  They passed whole nights in the quarries of Vanvres and of Vaugirard uttering invocations.  M. le Duc d’Orleans, however, admitted to me that he had never succeeded in hearing or seeing anything, and at last had given up this folly.

At first it was only to please Madame d’Argenton, but afterwards from curiosity, that he tried to see the present and the future in a glass of water; so he said, and he was no liar.  To be false and to be a liar are not one and the same thing, though they closely resemble each other, and if he told a lie it was only when hard pressed upon some promise or some business, and in spite of himself, so as to escape from a dilemma.