no opinion; my
commission does not extend so far."

"I understand you," said I; "she seeks for peace only as it would enable
her the better to carry on her hostilities against me. I am
sorry, madame la marechale, that I cannot accept your terms for a
reconciliation."

"Remember, I pray of you, that I have been an ambassadress, and nothing
more," said madame de Mirepoix; "recollect I have spoken to you in the
words of others, not my own. I must beg of you to be secret; if you
divulge the particulars of this morning's conversation, it is I who
will suffer by it: your friends will be displeased with me for my
interference; and I have no inclination to provoke the anger of a party
so powerful as yours."

I promised the marechale to observe an inviolable secrecy; and, so well
have I kept my promise, that you are the first person to whom I ever
breathed one syllable of the affair. I must own, that it struck me as
strange, that the duc de Choiseul should abandon his cousin, and consent
to take his seat beside the duc d'Aiguillon, whom he detested: perhaps
he only sought to deceive us all by gaining time, till the death of
the king. But what avails speculation upon the words and actions of
a courtier, whose heart is an abyss too deep for gleam of light to
penetrate?

CHAPTER XXVI

Baron d'Oigny, general post-master--The king and the
countess read the opened letters--The disgrace of de
Choiseul resolved upon--_Lettre de cachet _--Anecdote--
Spectre of Philip II, king of Spain--The duc de Choiseul
banished--Visits to Chanteloup--The princesses--The dauphin
and dauphiness--Candidates for the ministry

The interference of madame de Mirepoix, originating, as it did, in the
duc de Choiseul, let me at once into the secret of his fears and the
extent of my own power. The knowledge of the weakness of my adversary
redoubled my energy; and from this moment, I allowed no day to pass
without forwarding the great work, till I succeeded in effecting the
duke's ruin and securing my own triumph. The pamphleteers in the pay of
my enemies, and those who merely copied these hirelings, assert that
one evening after supper, when Louis was intoxicated with wine and my
seductions, I prevailed upon him to sign a _lettre de cachet_ against
his minister, which he immediately revoked when the break of day had
restored to him his senses. This was a malicious falsehood. You shall
hear the exact manner in which t