three half naked!  Madame put on a robe as soon as possible, and I did the same, and the King changed his clothes behind the curtains, which were very decently closed.  He afterwards spoke of this short attack, and expressed his sense of the attentions shown him.  An hour after, I felt the greatest possible terror in thinking that the King might have died in our hands.  Happily, he quickly recovered himself, and none of the domestics perceived what had taken place.  I merely told the girl of the wardrobe to put everything to rights, and she thought it was Madame who had been indisposed.  The King, the next morning, gave secretly to Quesnay a little note for Madame, in which he said, ‘Ma chere amie’ must have had a great fright, but let her reassure herself—­I am now well, which the Doctor will certify to you.  From that moment the King became accustomed to me, and, touched by the interest I had shown for him, he often gave me one of his peculiarly gracious glances, and made me little presents, and, on every New Year’s Day, sent me porcelain to the amount of twenty louis d’or.  He told Madame that he looked upon me in the apartment as a picture or statue, and never put any constraint upon himself on account of my presence.  Doctor Quesnay received a pension of a thousand crowns for his attention and silence, and the promise of a place for his son.  The King gave me an order upon the Treasury for four thousand francs, and Madame had presented to her a very handsome chiming-clock and the King’s portrait in a snuffbox.

The King was habitually melancholy, and liked everything which recalled the idea of death, in spite of the strongest fears of it.  Of this, the following is an instance:  Madame de Pompadour was on her way to Crecy, when one of the King’s grooms made a sign to her coachman to stop, and told him that the King’s carriage had broken down, and that, knowing her to be at no great distance, His Majesty had sent him forward to beg her to wait for him.  He soon overtook us, and seated himself in Madame de Pompadour’s carriage, in which were, I think, Madame de Chateau-Renaud, and Madame de Mirepoix.  The lords in attendance placed themselves in some other carriages.  I was behind, in a chaise, with Gourbillon, Madame de Pompadour’s valet de chambre.  We were surprised in a short time by the King stopping his carriage.  Those which followed, of course stopped also.  The King called a groom, and said to him, “You see that little eminence; there are crosses; it must certainly be a burying-ground; go and see whether there are any graves newly dug.”  The groom galloped up to it, returned, and said to the King, “There are three quite freshly made.”  Madame de Pompadour, as she told me, turned away her head with horror; and the little Marechale

[The Marechale de Mirepois died at Brussels in 1791, at a very advanced age, but preserving her wit and gaiety to the last.  The day of her death, after she had received the Sacrament, the physician told her that he thought her a good deal better.  She replied, “You tell me bad news:  having packed up, I had rather go.”  She was sister of the Prince de Beauveau.  The Prince de Ligne says, in one of his printed letters:  “She had that enchanting talent which supplies the means of pleasing everybody.  You would have sworn that she had thought of nothing but you all her life.”—­En.]