He spoke of it several times to me, and at last demanded with such earnestness that I should bring it to him, that I could not refuse.  I brought it to him accordingly, but read it to him I declared I never would.  He took it, therefore, and read it in a low tone, standing in the window of his little cabinet, where we were.  He judged it in reading much as it was, for he stopped from time to time to speak to me, and without appearing much moved.  But all on a sudden I saw him change countenance, and turn towards me, tears in his eyes, and himself ready to drop.

“Ah,” said he, “this is too much, this horrible poem beats me completely.”

He was at the part where the scoundrel shows M. le Duc d’Orleans having the design to poison the King, and quite ready to execute his crime.  It is the part where the author redoubles his energy, his poetry, his invocations, his terrible and startling beauties, his invectives, his hideous pictures, his touching portraits of the youth and innocence of the King, and of the hopes he has, adjuring the nation to save so dear a victim from the barbarity of a murderer; in a word, all that is most delicate, most tender, stringent, and blackest, most pompous, and most moving, is there.

I wished to profit by the dejected silence into which the reading of this poem had thrown M. le Duc d’Orleans, to take from him the execrable paper, but I could not succeed; he broke out into just complaints against such horrible wickedness, and into tenderness for the King; then finished his reading, that he interrupted more than once to speak to me.  I never saw a man so penetrated, so deeply touched, so overwhelmed with injustice so enormous and sustained.  As for me, I could not contain myself.  To see him, the most prejudiced, if of good faith, would have been convinced he was innocent of the come imputed to him, by the horror he displayed at it.  I have said all, when I state that I recovered myself with difficulty, and that I had all the pains in the world to compose him a little.

This La Grange, who was of no personal value, yet a good poet—­only that, and never anything else—­had, by his poetry, insinuated himself into Sceaux, where he had become one of the great favourites of Madame du Maine.  She and her husband knew his life, his habits, and his mercenary villainy.  They knew, too, haw to profit by it.  He was arrested shortly afterwards, and sent to the Isle de Sainte Marguerite, which he obtained permission to leave before the end of the Regency.  He had the audacity to show himself everywhere in Paris, and while he was appearing at the theatres and in all public places, people had the impudence to spread the report that M. le Duc d’Orleans had had him killed!  M. le Duc d’Orleans and his enemies have been equally indefatigable; the latter in the blackest villainies, the Prince in the most unfruitful clemency, to call it by no more expressive name.

Before the Regent was called to the head of public affairs, I recommended him to banish Pere Tellier when he had the power to do so.  He did not act upon my advice, or only partially; nevertheless, Tellier was disgraced, and after wandering hither and thither, a very firebrand wherever he went, he was confined by his superiors in La Fleche.