Madame de Pompadour had this passage, which had been sent to her by M. Jannette, the Intendant of the Police, who enjoyed the King’s entire confidence.  He had carefully watched the King’s look, while he read the letter, and he saw that the arguments of this counsellor, who was not a disaffected person, made a great impression upon him.  Some time afterwards, Madame de Pompadour said to me, “The haughty Marquise behaved like Mademoiselle Deschamps,

[A courtesan, distinguished for her charms, and still more so for an extraordinary proof of patriotism.  At a time when the public Treasury was exhausted, Mademoiselle Deschamps sent all her plate to the Mint.  Louis XIV. boasted of this act of generous devotion to her country.  The Duc d’Ayen made it the subject of a pleasantry, which detracted nothing from the merit of the sacrifice—­but which is rather too gay for us to venture upon.]

and she is turned off.”  This was not Madame’s only subject of alarm.  A relation of Madame d’Estrades,

[The Comtesse d’Estrades, a relative of M. Normand, and a flatterer of Madame de Pompadour, who brought her to Court, was secretly in the pay of the Comte d’Argenson.  That Minister, who did not disdain la Fillon, from whom he extracted useful information, knew all that passed at the Court of the favourite, by means of Madame d’Estrades, whose ingratitude and perfidiousness he liberally paid.]

wife to the Marquis de C——­, had made the most pointed advances to the King, much more than were necessary for a man who justly thought himself the handsomest man in France, and who was, moreover, a King.  He was perfectly persuaded that every woman would yield to the slightest desire he might deign to manifest.  He, therefore, thought it a mere matter of course that women fell in love with him.  M. de Stainville had a hand in marring the success of that intrigue; and, soon afterwards, the Marquise de C-----, who was confined to her apartments at Marly, by her relations, escaped through a closet to a rendezvous, and was caught with a young man in a corridor.  The Spanish Ambassador, coming out of his apartments with flambeaux, was the person who witnessed this scene.  Madame d’Estrades affected to know nothing of her cousin’s intrigues, and kept up an appearance of the tenderest attachment to Madame de Pompadour, whom she was habitually betraying.  She acted as spy for M. d’Argenson, in the cabinets, and in Madame de Pompadour’s apartments; and, when she could discover nothing, she had recourse to her invention, in order that she might not lose her importance with her lover.  This Madame d’Estrades owed her whole existence to the bounties of Madame, and yet, ugly as she was, she had tried to get the King away from her.  One day, when he, had got rather drunk at Choisy (I think, the only time that, ever happened to him), he went on board a beautiful barge, whither Madame, being ill of an indigestion, could not accompany him.  Madame d’Estrades