Ministre," she
demanded flippantly, "of which you find it so impossible to relax
your hold?"

"A precious document indeed, Madame," was the abrupt reply, "and one in
which you figure among many others." So saying, he unrolled the scroll,
and read aloud a list of edicts, solicited or granted, similar to that
of the Comte de Soissons, one of which bore her own name.

"And what are you about to do with it?" she asked.

"To make it the subject of a remonstrance to his Majesty."

"Truly," exclaimed the Marquise, no longer able to control her rage,
"the King will be well-advised should he listen to your caprices, and by
so doing affront twenty individuals of the highest quality. Upon whom
should he confer such favours as these, if not upon the Princes of the
Blood, his cousins, his relatives, and his mistresses?"

"That might be very well," replied the minister, totally unmoved by her
insolence, "if the King could pay these sums out of his own privy purse;
but that they should be levied upon the merchant, the artizan, and the
labourer, is entirely out of the question. It is they who feed both him
and us; and one master is enough, without their being compelled to
support so many cousins, relatives, and mistresses." [220]

Madame de Verneuil could bear no more; but rising passionately from her
chair, she left the room without even a parting salutation to the
plain-spoken minister, who saw her depart with as much composure as he
had seen her enter; and quietly rolling up the obnoxious document which
had formed the subject of discussion between them, he in his turn got
into his carriage, and proceeded to the Louvre.

Furious alike at her want of success and at the affront which had been
put upon her, the Marquise drove from the Arsenal to the hotel of M. de
Soissons; where, still smarting under the rebuff of the uncompromising
Duke, she did not scruple sufficiently to garble his words to give them
all the appearance of a premeditated and wilful insult to the Prince
personally. She assured him that in reply to her remark that the
relatives of the monarch possessed the greatest claim upon his
liberality, M. de Sully had retorted by the observation that the King
had too many kinsmen, and that it would be well for the nation could it
be delivered from some of them.

This report so exasperated M. de Soissons, that on the following morning
he demanded an audience of the sovereign, during which he bitterly
inveighed against the