Mirabeau said, “I think the King looks ill, he grows old.”—­“So much the worse, a thousand times so much the worse,” said Quesnay; “it would be the greatest possible loss to France if he died;” and he raised his hands, and sighed deeply.  “I do not doubt that you are attached to the King, and with reason,” said Mirabeau:  “I am attached to him too; but I never saw you so much moved.”—­“Ah!” said Quesnay, “I think of what would follow.”—­“Well, the Dauphin is virtuous.”—­“Yes; and full of good intentions; nor is he deficient in understanding; but canting hypocrites would possess an absolute empire over a Prince who regards them as oracles.  The Jesuits would govern the kingdom, as they did at the end of Louis XIV.’s reign:  and you would see the fanatical Bishop of Verdun Prime Minister, and La Vauguyon all-powerful under some other title.  The Parliaments must then mind how they behave; they will not be better treated than my friends the philosophers.”—­“But they go too far,” said Mirabeau; “why openly attack religion?”—­“I allow that,” replied the Doctor; “but how is it possible not to be rendered indignant by the fanaticism of others, and by recollecting all the blood that has flowed during the last two hundred years?  You must not then again irritate them, and revive in France the time of Mary in England.  But what is done is done, and I often exhort them to be moderate; I wish they would follow the example of our friend Duclos.”—­“You are right,” replied Mirabeau; “he said to me a few days ago, ’These philosophers are going on at such a rate that they will force me to go to vespers and high mass;’ but, in fine, the Dauphin is virtuous, well-informed, and intellectual.”—­“It is the commencement of his reign, I fear,” said Quesnay, “when the imprudent proceedings of our friends will be represented to him in the most unfavourable point of view; when the Jansenists and Molinists will make common cause, and be strongly supported by the Dauphine.  I thought that M. de Muy was moderate, and that he would temper the headlong fury of the others; but I heard him say that Voltaire merited condign punishment.  Be assured, sir, that the times of John Huss and Jerome of Prague will return; but I hope not to live to see it.  I approve of Voltaire having hunted down the Pompignans:  were it not for the ridicule with which he covered them, that bourgeois Marquis would have been preceptor to the young Princes, and, aided by his brother, would have succeeded in again lighting the faggots of persecution.”—­“What ought to give you confidence in the Dauphin,” said Mirabeau, “is, that, notwithstanding the devotion of Pompignan, he turns him into ridicule.  A short time back, seeing him strutting about with an air of inflated pride, he said to a person, who told it to me, ‘Our friend Pompignan thinks that he is something.’” On returning home, I wrote down this conversation.