The King came into Madame de Pompadour’s room, one day, as she was finishing dressing.  “I have just had a strange adventure,” said he:  “would you believe that, in going out of my wardroom into my bedroom, I met a gentleman face to face?”—­“My God!  Sire,” cried Madame, terrified.  “It was nothing,” replied he; “but I confess I was greatly surprised:  the man appeared speechless with consternation.  ‘What do you do here?’ said I, civilly.  He threw himself on his knees, saying, ’Pardon me, Sire; and, above all, have me searched:  He instantly emptied his pockets himself; he pulled off his coat in the greatest agitation and terror:  at last he told me that he was cook to -----, and a friend of Beccari, whom he came to visit; that he had mistaken the staircase, and, finding all the doors open, he had wandered into the room in which I found him, and which he would have instantly left:  I rang; Guimard came, and was astonished enough at finding me tete-a-tete with a man in his shirt.  He begged Guimard to go with him into another room, and to search his whole person.  After this, the poor devil returned, and put on his coat.  Guimard said to me, ’He is certainly an honest man, and tells the truth; this may, besides, be easily ascertained.’  Another of the servants of the palace came in, and happened to know him.  ’I will answer for this good man,’ said, he, ’who, moreover, makes the best ‘boeuf a carlate’ in the world.’  As I saw the man was so agitated that he could not stand steady, I took fifty louis out of my bureau, and said, Here, sir, are fifty Louis, to quiet your alarms:  He went out, after throwing himself at my feet.”  Madame exclaimed on the impropriety of having the King’s bedroom thus accessible to everybody.  He talked with great calmness of this strange apparition, but it was evident that he controlled himself, and that he had, in fact, been much frightened, as, indeed, he had reason to be.  Madame highly approved of the gift; and she was the more right in applauding it, as it was by no means in the King’s usual manner.  M. de Marigny said, when I told him of this adventure, that he would have wagered a thousand louis against the King’s making a present of fifty, if anybody but I had told him of the circumstance.  “It is a singular fact,” continued he, “that all of the race of Valois have been liberal to excess; this is not precisely the case with the Bourbons, who are rather reproached with avarice.  Henri IV. was said to be avaricious.  He gave to his mistresses, because he could refuse them nothing; but he played with the eagerness of a man whose whole fortune depends on the game.  Louis XIV. gave through ostentation.  It is most astonishing,” added he, “to reflect on what might have happened.  The King might actually have been assassinated in his chamber, without anybody knowing anything of the matter and without a possibility of discovering the murderer.”  For more than a fortnight Madame could not get over this incident.