with repugnance.  I could not help feeling for him what the poor, Israelites said to themselves in the desert about the manna:  “Nauseat anima mea suffer cibum istum tevissimum.”  I no longer deigned to speak to him.  He perceived this:  I felt he was pained at it; he strove to reconcile me to him, without daring, however, to speak of affairs, except briefly, and with constraint, and yet he could not hinder himself from speaking of them.  I scarcely took the trouble to reply to him, and I cut his conversation as short as possible.  I abridged and curtailed my audiences with him; I listened to his reproaches with coldness.  In fact, what had I to discuss with a Regent who was no longer one, not even over himself, still less over a realm plunged in disorder?

Cardinal Dubois, when he met me, almost courted me.  He knew not how to catch me.  The bonds which united me to M. le Duc d’Orleans had always been so strong that the prime minister, who knew their strength, did not dare to flatter himself he could break them.  His resource was to try to disgust me by inducing his master to treat me with a reserve which was completely new to him, and which cost him more than it cost me; for, in fact, he had often found my confidence very useful to him, and had grown accustomed to it.  As for me, I dispensed with his friendship more than willingly, vexed at being no longer able to gather any fruit from it for the advantage of the State or himself, wholly abandoned as he was to his Paris pleasures and to his minister.  The conviction of my complete inutility more and more kept me in the background, without the slightest suspicion that different conduct could be dangerous to me, or that, weak and abandoned to Dubois as was the Regent, the former could ever exile me, like the Duc de Roailles, and Cariillac, or disgust me into exiling myself.  I followed, then, my accustomed life.  That is to say, never saw M. le Duc d’Orleans except tete-a-tete, and then very seldom at intervals that each time grew longer, coldly, briefly, never talking to him of business, or, if he did to me, returning the conversation, and replying it! a manner to make it drop.  Acting thus, it is easy to see that I was mixed up in nothing, and what I shall have to relate now will have less of the singularity and instructiveness of good and faithful memoirs, than of the dryness and sterility of the gazettes.

First of all I will finish my account of Cardinal Dubois.  I have very little more to say of him; for he had scarcely begun to enjoy his high honours when Death came to laugh at him for the sweating labour he had taken to acquire them.

On the 11th of June, 1723, the King went to reside at Meudon, ostensibly in order that the chateau of Versailles might be cleared—­in reality, to accommodate Cardinal Dubois.  He had just presided over the assembly of the day, and flattered to the last degree at this, wished to repose upon the honour.  He desired, also, to be present sometimes at the assembling of the Company of the Indies.  Meudon brought him half-way to Paris, and saved him a journey.  His debauchery had so shattered his health that the movement of a coach gave him pains which he very carefully hid.