I replied therefore to these gentlemen that I thought the commission very strange, and much more so their reasoning of it; that Torcy was not a man from whom an office of this importance could be taken unless he wished to give it up; that all I could do was to ask him if he wished to resign, and if so, on what conditions; that as to exhorting him to resign, I could do nothing of the kind, although I was not ignorant of what this refusal might cost me and my embassy.  They tried in vain to reason with me; all they could obtain was this firm resolution.

Castries and his brother, the Archbishop, were intimate friends of Torcy and of myself.  I sent for them to come to me in the midst of the tumult of my departure.  They immediately came, and I related to them what had just happened.  They were more indignant at the manner and the moment, than at the thing itself; for Torcy knew that sooner or later the Cardinal would strip him of the post for his own benefit.  They extremely praised my reply, exhorted me to send word to Torcy, who was on the point of departing from Sable, or had departed, and who would make his own terms with M. le Duc d’Orleans much more advantageously, present, than absent.  I read to them the letter I had written to Torcy, while waiting for them, which they much approved, and which I at once despatched.

Torcy of himself, had hastened his return.  My courier found him with his wife in the Parc of Versailles, having passed by the Chartres route.  He read my letter, charged the courier with many compliments for me (his wife did likewise), and told me to say he would see me the next day.  I informed M. Castries of his arrival.  We all four met the next day.  Torcy warmly appreciated my conduct, and, to his death, we lived on terms of the greatest intimacy, as may be imagined when I say that he committed to me his memoirs (these he did not write until long after the death of M. le Duc d’Orleans), with which I have connected mine.  He did not seem to care for the post, if assured of an honourable pension.

I announced then his return to Dubois, saying it would be for him and M. le Duc d’Orleans to make their own terms with him, and get out of the. matter in this way.  Dubois, content at seeing by this that Torcy consented to resign the post, cared not how, so that the latter made his own arrangements, and all passed off with the best grace on both sides.  Torcy had some money and 60,000 livres pension during life, and 20,000 for his wife after him.  This was arranged before my departure and was very well carried out afterwards.

A little while after the declaration of the marriage, the Duchesse de Ventadour and Madame de Soubise, her granddaughter, had been named, the one governess of the Infanta, the other successor to the office; and they were both to go and meet her at the frontier, and bring her to Paris to the Louvre, where she was to be lodged a little while after the declaration of my embassy:  the Prince de Rohan, her son-in-law, had orders to go and make the exchange of the Princesses upon the frontier, with the people sent by the King of Spain to perform the same function.  I had never had any intimacy with them, though we were not on bad terms.  But these Spanish commissions caused us to visit each other with proper politeness.  I forgot to say so earlier and in the proper place.