uarrels
than you have already. It seems to me that you ought to avoid them
instead of creating such disturbances."

He had assumed a grave tone in reading me this lecture: but as we were
in a place in which majesty could not be committed, I began to laugh
heartily, and to startle him, I said that henceforward I would pilot
my bark myself, and defend myself by openly assailing all persons who
testified an aversion to me. How laughable it was to see the comic
despair in which this determination threw the king. It seemed to him
that the whole court would be at loggerheads; and he could not restrain
himself from exclaiming, that he would a hundred times rather struggle
against the king of Prussia and the emperor of Germany united, than
against three or four females of the chateau. In a word, I frightened
him so completely, that he decided on the greatest act of courage he had
ever essayed in my favor: it was, to desire the intervention of the duc
de Choiseul in all these quarrels.

The credit of this minister was immense, and this credit was based on
four powerful auxiliaries; namely the parliament, the philosophers, the
_literati_, and the women. The high magistracy found in him a public and
private protector. The parliaments had themselves a great many clients,
and their voices, given to the duc de Choiseul, gave him great power in
the different provinces. The philosophers, ranged under the banner of
Voltaire, who was their god, and of d'Alembert, their patriarch, knew
all his inclinations for them, and knew how far they might rely on
his support in all attempts which they made to weaken the power of the
clergy, and to diminish the gigantic riches which had been amassed by
prelates and monasteries. The writers were equally devoted to him: they
progressed with the age, and as on all sides they essayed to effect
important reforms, it was natural that they should rally about him in
whose hands was the power of their operations.

The ladies admired his gallantry: in fact, the duc de Choiseul was a
man who understood marvellously well how to combine serious labors with
pleasure. I was, perhaps, the only woman of the court whom he would not
love, and yet I was not the least agreeable nor the most ugly. It
was very natural for them to exalt his merit and take him under their
especial protection. Thus was he supported in every quarter by them;
they boasted of his measures, and by dint of repeating in the ears of
every body tha