The Comte de St. Germain came to see Madame de Pompadour, who was ill, and lay on the sofa.  He shewed her a little box, containing topazes, rubies, and emeralds.  He appeared to have enough to furnish a treasury.  Madame sent for me to see all these beautiful things.  I looked at them with an air of the utmost astonishment, but I made signs to Madame that I thought them all false.  The Count felt for something in his pocketbook, about twice as large as a spectacle-case, and, at length, drew out two or three little paper packets, which he unfolded, and exhibited a superb ruby.  He threw on the table, with a contemptuous air, a little cross of green and white stones.  I looked at it and said, “That is not to be despised.”  I put it on, and admired it greatly.  The Count begged me to accept it.  I refused—­he urged me to take it.  Madame then refused it for me.  At length, he pressed it upon me so warmly that Madame, seeing that it could not be worth above forty Louis, made me a sign to accept it.  I took the cross, much pleased at the Count’s politeness; and, some days after, Madame presented him with an enamelled box, upon which was the portrait of some Grecian sage (whose name I don’t recollect), to whom she compared him.  I skewed the cross to a jeweller, who valued it at sixty-five Louis.  The Count offered to bring Madame some enamel portraits, by Petitot, to look at, and she told him to bring them after dinner, while the King was hunting.  He shewed his portraits, after which Madame said to him, “I have heard a great deal of a charming story you told two days ago, at supper, at M. le Premier’s, of an occurrence you witnessed fifty or sixty years ago.”  He smiled and said, “It is rather long.”—­“So much the better,” said she, with an air of delight.  Madame de Gontaut and the ladies came in, and the door was shut; Madame made a sign to me to sit down behind the screen.  The Count made many apologies for the ennui which his story would, perhaps, occasion.  He said, “Sometimes one can tell a story pretty well; at other times it is quite a different thing.”

“At the beginning of this century, the Marquis de St. Gilles was Ambassador from Spain to the Hague.  In his youth he had been particularly intimate with the Count of Moncade, a grandee of Spain, and one of the richest nobles of that country.  Some months after the Marquis’s arrival at the Hague, he received a letter from the Count, entreating him, in the name of their former friendship, to render him the greatest possible service.  ‘You know,’ said he, ’my dear Marquis, the mortification I felt that the name of Moncade was likely to expire with me.  At length, it pleased heaven to hear my prayers, and to grant me a son:  he gave early promise of dispositions worthy of his birth, but he, some time since, formed an unfortunate and disgraceful attachment to the most celebrated actress of the company of Toledo.  I shut my eyes to this imprudence on the part of a young man whose conduct had, till