t the Constitution cannot be friendly to him; they
have, however, kept so quiet that nothing can be brought against them.
They are cunning old fellows.

Madame d'Orleans begins to recover her spirits and to laugh again,
particularly since I learn she has consulted the Premier President and
other persons, to know whether, upon my son's death, she would become the
Regent. They told her that could not be, but that the office would fall
upon the Duke. This answer is said to have been very unpalatable to her.

If my son would have paid a price high enough to the Cardinal de
Polignac, he would have betrayed them all. He is now consoling himself
in his Abbey with translating Lucretius.

The King of Spain's manifesto, instead of injuring my son, has been
useful to him, because it was too violent and partial. Alberoni must
needs be a brutal and an intemperate person. But how could a journeyman
gardener know the language which ought to be addressed to crowned heads?
Several thousand copies of this manifesto have been transmitted to Paris,
addressed to all the persons in the Court, to all the Bishops, in short,
to everybody; even to the Parliament, which has taken the affair up very
properly, from Paris to Bordeaux, as the decree shows. I thought it
would have been better to burn this manifesto in the post-office instead
of suffering it to be spread about; but my son said they should all be
delivered, for the express purpose of discovering the feelings of the
parties to whom they were addressed, and a register of them was kept at
the post-office. Those who were honest brought them of their own accord;
the others kept them, and they are marked, without the public knowing
anything about it. The manifesto is the work of Malezieux and the
Cardinal de Polignac.

A pamphlet has been cried about the streets, entitled, "Un arret contre
les poules d'Inde." Upon looking at it, however, it seems to be a decree
against the Jesuits, who had lost a cause respecting a priory, of which
they had taken possession. Everybody bought it except the partisans of
the Constitution and of the Spanish faction.

My son is more fond of his daughters, legitimate and illegitimate, than
his son.

The Duc and Duchesse du Maine rely upon nothing having been found in
their writing; but Mademoiselle de Montauban and Malezieux have written.
in their name; and is not what Pompadour has acknowledged voluntarily
quite as satisfactory a proof as even their own writ