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.

Although we often spoke upon religion, to which I tried to lead him so long as I had hope of success, I never could unravel the system he had formed for himself, and I ended by becoming persuaded that he wavered unceasingly without forming any religion at all.

His passionate desire, like that of his companions in morals, was this, that it would turn out that there is no God; but he had too much enlightenment to be an atheist; who is a particular kind of fool much more rare than is thought.  This enlightenment importuned him; he tried to extinguish it and could not.  A mortal soul would have been to him a resource; but he could not convince himself of its existence.  A God and an immortal soul, threw him into sad straits, and yet he could not blind himself