off.  The King had it weighed, and found it but very little diminished.  The King sent it to his jeweller by M. de Gontaut, without telling him anything of what had passed.  The jeweller gave three hundred and eighty louis for it.  The King, however, sent for it back again, and kept it as a curiosity.  He could not overcome his surprise, and said that M. de St. Germain must be worth millions, especially if he had also the secret of making large diamonds out of a number of small ones.  He neither said that he had, nor that he had not; but he positively asserted that he could make pearls grow, and give them the finest water.  The King, paid him great attention, and so did Madame de Pompadour.  It was from her I learnt what I have just related.  M. Queanay said, talking of the pearls, “They are produced by a disease in the oyster.  It is possible to know the cause of it; but, be that as it may, he is not the less a quack, since he pretends to have the elixir vitae, and to have lived several centuries.  Our master is, however, infatuated by him, and sometimes talks of him as if his descent were illustrious.”

I have seen him frequently:  he appeared to be about fifty; he was neither fat nor thin; he had an acute, intelligent look, dressed very simply, but in good taste; he wore very fine diamonds in his rings, watch, and snuff-box.  He came, one day, to visit Madame de Pompadour, at a time when the Court was in full splendour, with knee and shoe-buckles of diamonds so fine and brilliant that Madame said she did not believe the King had any equal to them.  He went into the antechamber to take them off, and brought them to be examined; they were compared with others in the room, and the Duc de Gontaut, who was present, said they were worth at least eight thousand louis.  He wore, at the same time, a snuff-box of inestimable value, and ruby sleeve-buttons, which were perfectly dazzling.  Nobody could find out by what means this man became so rich and so remarkable; but the King would not suffer him to be spoken of with ridicule or contempt.  He was said to be a bastard son of the King of Portugal.

I learnt, from M. de Marigny, that the relations of the good little Marechale (de Mirepoix) had been extremely severe upon her, for what they called the baseness of her conduct, with regard to Madame de Pompadour.  They said she held the stones of the cherries which Madame ate in her carriage, in her beautiful little hands, and that she sate in the front of the carriage, while Madame occupied the whole seat in the inside.  The truth was, that, in going to Crecy, on an insupportably hot day, they both wished to sit alone, that they might be cooler; and as to the matter of the cherries, the villagers having brought them some, they ate them to refresh themselves, while the horses were changed; and the Marechal emptied her pocket-handkerchief, into which they had both thrown the cherry-stones, out of the carriage window.  The people who were changing the horses had given their own version of the affair.