would only be the more malicious.  The Duc d’Orleans was, just then, extremely jealous of the Comte de Melfort; and the Lieutenant of Police told the King he had strong reasons for believing that the Duke would stick at nothing to rid himself of this gallant, and that he thought it his duty to give the Count notice, that he ought to be upon his guard.  The King said, “He would not dare to attempt any such violence as you seem to apprehend; but there is a better way:  let him try to surprise them, and he will find me very well inclined to have his cursed wife shut up; but if he got rid of this lover, she would have another to-morrow.

“Nay, she has others at this moment; for instance, the Chevalier de Colbert, and the Comte de l’Aigle.”  Madame de Pompadour, however, told me these two last affairs were not certain.

An adventure happened about the same time, which the Lieutenant of Police reported to the King.  The Duchesse d’Orleans had amused herself one evening, about eight o’clock, with ogling a handsome young Dutchman, whom she took a fancy to, from a window of the Palais Royal.  The young man, taking her for a woman of the town, wanted to make short work, at which she was very much shocked.  She called a Swiss, and made herself known.  The stranger was arrested; but he defended himself by affirming that she had talked very loosely to him.  He was dismissed, and the Duc d’Orleans gave his wife a severe reprimand.

The King (who hated her so much that he spoke of her without the slightest restraint) one day said to Madame de Pompadour, in my presence, “Her mother knew what she was, for, before her marriage, she never suffered her to say more than yes and no.  Do you know her joke on the nomination of Moras?  She sent to congratulate him upon it:  two minutes after, she called back the messenger she had sent, and said, before everybody present, ’Before you speak to him, ask the Swiss if he still has the place.’” Madame de Pompadour was not vindictive, and, in spite of the malicious speeches of the Duchesse d’Orleans, she tried to excuse her conduct.  “Almost all women,” she said, “have lovers; she has not all that are imputed to her:  but her free manners, and her conversation, which is beyond all bounds, have brought her into general disrepute.”

My companion came into my room the other day, quite delighted.  She had been with M. de Chenevieres, first Clerk in the War-office, and a constant correspondent of Voltaire, whom she looks upon as a god.  She was, by the bye, put into a great rage one day, lately, by a print-seller in the street, who was crying, “Here is Voltaire, the famous Prussian; here you see him, with a great bear-skin cap, to keep him from the cold!  Here is the famous Prussian, for six sous!”—­“What a profanation!” said she.  To return to my story:  M. de Chenevieres had shewn her some letters from Voltaire, and M. Marmontel had read an ‘Epistle to his Library’.