My alarms--An <eleve> of the <Parc-aux-Cerfs>--Comte Jean endeavours to direct the king's ideas--A supper at Trianon--Table talk--The king is seized with illness--His conversation with me--The joiner's daughter and the small-pox--My despair--Conduct of La Martiniere the surgeonI had occasionally some unaccountable whims and caprices. Among other follies I took it into my head to become jealous of the duchesse de Cosse, under the idea that the duke would return to her, and that I should no longer possess his affections. Now the cause of this extravagant conduct was the firmness with which madame de Cosse refused all overtures to visit me, and I had really become so spoiled and petted, that I could not be brought to understand the reasonableness of the duchesse de Cosse refusing to sanction her rival by her presence.
Yon may perceive that I had not carried my heroic projects with regard to madame de Cosse into execution. Upon these occasions, the person most to be pitied was the duke, whom I made answerable for the dignified and virtuous conduct of his wife. My injustice drove him nearly to despair, and he used every kind and sensible argument to convince me of my error, as though it had been possible for one so headstrong and misguided as myself to listen to or comprehend the language of reason. I replied to his tender and beseeching epistles by every cutting and mortifying remark; in a word, all common sense appeared to have forsaken me. Our quarrel was strongly suspected by part of the court; but the extreme prudence and forbearance of M. de Cosse prevented their suppositions from ever obtaining any confirmation. But this was not the only subject I had for annoyance. On the one hand, my emissaries informed me that the king still continued to visit the baroness de New---k, although with every appearance of caution and mystery, by the assistance and connivance of the duc de Duras, who had given me his solemn promise never again to meddle with the affair. The <gouvernante> of the <Parc-aux-Cerfs> furnished me likewise with a long account of the many visits paid by his majesty to her establishment. The fact was, the king could not be satisfied without a continual variety, and his passion, which ultimately destroyed him, appeared to have come on only as he advanced in years.
All these things created in my mind an extreme agitation and an alarm, and, improbable as the thing appeared even to myself, there were moments when I trembled lest I should be supplanted either by the baroness or some -fresh object of the king's caprice; and again a cold dread stole over me as I anticipated the probability of the health of Louis XV falling a sacrifice to the irregularity of his life. It was well known throughout the chateau, that La Martiniere, the king's surgeon, had strongly recommended a very temperate course of life, as essentially necessary to recruit his constitution, wasted by so many excesses, and had even gone so far as to recommend his no longer having a mistress; this the courtiers construed into a prohibition against his possessing a friend of any other sex than his own; for my own part, Iexperienced very slight apprehensions of being dismissed, for Iwell knew that Louis XV reckoned too much on my society to permit my leaving the court, and if one, the more tender, part of our union were dissolved, etiquette could no longer object to my presence. Still the advice of La Martiniere was far from giving me a reason for congratulation, but these minor grievances were soon to be swallowed up in one fatal catastrophe, by which the honours, and pleasures of Versailles were for ever torn from me.
The <madame> of the <Parc-aux-Cerfs>, fearing that some of the subordinate members of that establishment might bring me intimation of what was going on there without her cognizance, came one day to apprize me that his majesty had fallen desperately in love with a young orphan of high birth, whom chance had conducted within the walls of her harem; that to an extraordinary share of beauty, Julie (for that was the name of my rival) united the most insatiate ambition; her aims were directed to reducing the king into a state of the most absolute bondage," and he," said madame, "bids fair to become all that the designing girl would have him."Julie feigned the most violent love for her royal admirer, nayshe did not hesitate to carry her language and caresses far beyond the strict rules of decency; her manners were those of one accustomed to the most polished society, whilst her expressions were peculiarly adapted to please one who, like the king, had a peculiar relish for every thing that was indecent or incorrect.
His majesty either visited her daily or sent for her to the chateau. I heard likewise from M. d'Aiguillon, that the king had recently given orders that the three uncles and two brothers of Julie should be raised by rapid promotion to the highest military rank; at the same time the grand almoner informed me he had received his majesty's express command to appoint a cousin of the young lady to the first vacant bishopric.
These various reports threw me into a train of painful and uneasy reflections. Louis XV. had never before bestowed such marks of favour upon any <eleve> of the <Parc- aux-Cerfs, and the intrigue had attained this height with the most inconceivable rapidity.