set down here; where it may serve
for a preface to those more serious events attending the trial and
execution of M. de Biron, which I shall have to relate.

I had occasion, about the end of the month of January, to see M. du
Hallot. The weather was cold, and partly for that reason, partly out of
a desire to keep my visit, which had to do with the Biron disclosures,
from the general eye, I chose to go on foot. For the same reason I took
with me only two servants and a confidential page, the son of my friend
Arnaud. M. du Hallot, who lived at this time in a house in the Faubourg
St. Germain, not far from the College of France, detained me long, and
when I rose to leave insisted that I should take his coach, as snow had
begun to fall, and lay an inch deep in the streets. At first I was
unwilling to do this, but reflecting that such small services are highly
valued by those who render them, and attach men more surely than the
greatest bribes, I yielded, and, taking my place with some becoming
expressions, bade young Arnaud find his way home on foot.

The coach had nearly reached the south end of the Pont au Change, when a
number of youths ran past me, pelting one another with snowballs, and
shouting so lustily that I was at a loss which to admire more, the
silence of their feet or the loudness of their voices. Aware that lads
of that age are no respecters of persons, I was not surprised to see two
or three of them rush on to the bridge before us, and even continue
their Parthian warfare under the feet of the horses. The result,
however, was that the latter took fright at that part of the bridge
where the houses encroach most on the roadway; and but for the care of
the running footman, who hastened to their heads, might have done some
harm either to the coach or the passers-by.

As it was, we were brought to a stop while one of the wheels was
extricated from the kennel, in which it had become wedged. Smiling to
think what the King--who, strangely warned by Providence, was throughout
his life timid in a coach--would have said to this, I went to open the
curtains, and had effected this to some extent, when one of a crowd of
idlers who stood on the raised pavement deliberately lifted up his arm
and flung a snowball at me.

The missile flew wide of its mark by an inch or two only. That I was
amazed at such audacity goes without saying; but doubting of what it
might be the preclude--for the breakdown of the coach in that nar