I write without plan, order, or date, just as things come into my mind; and I shall now go to the Abbe de Bernis, whom I liked very much, because he was good-natured, and treated me kindly.  One day, just as Madame de Pompadour had finished dressing, M. de Noailles asked to speak to her in private.  I, accordingly, retired.  The Count looked full of important business.  I heard their conversation, as there was only the door between us.

“A circumstance has taken place,” said he, “which I think it my duty to communicate to the King; but I would not do so without first informing you of it, since it concerns one of your friends for whom I have the utmost regard and respect.  The Abbe de Bernis had a mind to shoot, this morning, and went, with two or three of his people, armed with guns, into the little park, where the Dauphin would not venture to shoot without asking the King’s permission.  The guards, surprised at hearing the report of guns, ran to the spot, and were greatly astonished at the sight of M. de Bernis.  They very respectfully asked to see his permission, when they found, to their astonishment, that he had none.  They begged of him to desist, telling him that, if they did their duty, they should arrest him; but they must, at all events, instantly acquaint me with the circumstance, as Ranger of the Park of Versailles.  They added, that the King must have heard the firing, and that they begged of him to retire.  The Abbe apologized, on the score of ignorance, and assured them that he had my permission.  ‘The Comte de Noailles,’ said they, ’could only grant permission to shoot in the more remote parts, and in the great park.’” The Count made a great merit of his eagerness to give the earliest information to Madame.  She told him to leave the task of communicating it to the King to her, and begged of him to say nothing about the matter.  M. de Marigny, who did not like the Abbe, came to see me in the evening; and I affected to know nothing of the story, and to hear it for the first time from him.  “He must have been out of his senses,” said he, “to shoot under the King’s windows,”—­and enlarged much on the airs he gave himself.  Madame de Pompadour gave this affair the best colouring she could the King was, nevertheless, greatly disgusted at it, and twenty times, since the Abbe’s disgrace, when he passed over that part of the park, he said, “This is where the Abbe took his pleasure.”  The King never liked him; and Madame de Pompadour told me one night, after his disgrace, when I was sitting up with her in her illness, that she saw, before he had been Minister a week, that he was not fit for his office.  “If that hypocritical Bishop,” said she, speaking of the Bishop of Mirepoix, “had not prevented the King from granting him a pension of four hundred louis a year, which he had promised me, he would never have been appointed Ambassador.  I should, afterwards, have been able to give him an income of eight hundred louis a year,