The Comte de la Marche, a prince of the blood--Madame de Beauvoir, his mistress--Madame du Barry complains to the prince de Soubise of the princess de Guemenee--The king consoles the countess for this--The duc de Choiseul--The king speaks to him of madame du Barry--Voltaire writes to her--The opinions of Richelieu and the king concerning VoltaireAmongst those personages who came to compliment me on the evening of my presentation was M. the comte de la Marche, son of the prince du Conti, and consequently prince of the blood. He had long been devoted to the will of Louis XV. As soon as his most serene highness had wind of my favor he hastened to add to the number of my court; and I leave you to imagine how greatly I was flattered at seeing it augmented by so august a personage.
This conquest was most valuable in my eyes, for I thus proved to the world, that by attracting the king to me I did not isolate him from the whole of his family. It is very true that for some time the comte de la Marche had been out of favor with the public, by reason of his over complaisance towards the ministers of the king's pleasure; but he was not the less a prince of the blood, and at Versailles this rank compensated for almost every fault. He was a lively man, moreover, his society was agreeable, and the title he bore reflected his distinction amongst a crowd of courtiers.
I felt, therefore, that I ought to consider myself as very fortunate that he deigned to visit me, and accordingly received him with all the civility I could display; and the welcome reception which he always experienced drew him frequently to my abode.
The friendship with which he honored me was not agreeable to my enemies; and they tried by every possible means to seduce him from me. They got his near relations to talk to him about it; his intimate friends to reason with him; the females whom he most admired to dissuade him from it. There was not one of these latter who did not essay to injure me in his estimation, by saying that he dishonored himself by an acquaintance with me. There was amongst others a marquise de Beauvoir, the issue of a petty nobility, whom he paid with sums of gold, altho' she was not his mistress by title. Gained over by the Choiseuls, she made proposals concerning me to the prince of so ridiculous a nature, that he said to her impatiently: "I' faith, my dear, as in the eyes of the world every woman who lives with a man who is not her husband is a ------, so I think a man is wise to choose the loveliest he can find; and in this way the king is at this moment much better off than any of his subjects."Only imagine what a rage this put the marquise de Beauvoir in: she stormed, wept, had a nervous attack. The comte de la Marche contemplated her with a desperate tranquillity; but this scene continuing beyond the limits of tolerable patience, he was so tired of it that he left her. This was not what the marquise wished; and she hastened to write a submissive letter to him, in which, to justify herself, she confessed to the prince, that in acting against me she had only yielded to the instigations of the cabal, and particularly alluded to mesdames de Grammont and de Guemenee.
The comte de la Marche showed me this letter, which I retained in spite of his resistance and all the efforts he made to obtain possession of it again. My intention was to show it to the king;and I did not fail to give it to him at the next visit he paid me:
he read it, and shrugging up his shoulders, as was his usual custom, he said to me,"They are devils incarnate, and the worst of the kind. They try to injure you in every way, but they shall not succeed. I receive also anonymous letters against you, they are tossed into the post-box in large packets with feigned names, in the hope that they will reach me. Such slanders ought not to annoy you: in the days of madame de Pompadour, the same thing was done. The same schemes were tried to ruin madame de Chateauroux. Whenever Ihave been suspected of any tenderness towards a particular female, every species of intrigue has been instantly put in requisition.