gaily said, “This is indeed enough to make one’s mouth water.”  Madame de Pompadour spoke of it when I was undressing her in the evening.  “What a strange pleasure,” said she, “to endeavour to fill one’s mind with images which one ought to endeavour to banish, especially when one is surrounded by so many sources of happiness!  But that is the King’s way; he loves to talk about death.  He said, some days ago, to M. de Fontanieu, who was, seized with a bleeding at the nose, at the levee:  ’Take care of yourself; at your age it is a forerunner of apoplexy.’  The poor man went home frightened, and absolutely ill.”

I never saw the King so agitated as during the illness of the Dauphin.  The physicians came incessantly to the apartments of Madame de Pompadour, where the King interrogated them.  There was one from Paris, a very odd man, called Pousse, who once said to him, “You are a good papa; I like you for that.  But you know we are all your children, and share your distress.  Take courage, however; your son will recover.”  Everybody’s eyes were upon the Duc d’Orleans, who knew not how to look.  He would have become heir to the crown, the Queen being past the age to have children.  Madame de ----- said to me, one day, when I was expressing my surprise at the King’s grief, “It would annoy him beyond measure to have a Prince of the blood heir apparent.  He does not like them, and looks upon their relationship to him as so remote, that he would feel humiliated by it.”  And, in fact, when his son recovered, he said, “The King of Spain would have had a fine chance.”  It was thought that he was right in this, and that it would have been agreeable to justice; but that, if the Duc d’Orleans had been supported by a party, he might have supported his pretensions to the crown.  It was, doubtless, to remove this impression that he gave a magnificent fete at St. Cloud on the occasion of the Dauphin’s recovery.  Madame de Pompadour said to Madame de Brancas, speaking of this fete, “He wishes to make us forget the chateau en Espagne he has been dreaming of; in Spain, however, they build them of solider materials.”  The people did not shew so much joy at the Dauphin’s recovery.  They looked upon him as a devotee, who did nothing but sing psalms.  They loved the Duc d’Orleans, who lived in the capital, and had acquired the name of the King of Paris.  These sentiments were not just; the Dauphin only sang psalms when imitating the tones of one of the choristers of the chapel.  The people afterwards acknowledged their error, and did justice to his virtues.  The Duc d’Orleans paid the most assiduous court to Madame de Pompadour:  the Duchess, on the contrary, detested her.  It is possible that words were put into the Duchess’s mouth which she never uttered; but she, certainly, often said most cutting things.  The King would have sent her into exile, had he listened only to his resentment; but he feared the eclat of such a proceeding, and he knew that she