to speak and think," and
other remarks equally gracious. I took then the opportunity of
expressing the sorrow I felt at seeing, that while my sole endeavour was
to please him, my enemies did all they could to blacken me in his eyes,
indicating that I suspected M. le Grand, who had never pardoned me for
the part I took in the affair of the Princesse d'Harcourt, was one of the
number. After I had finished the King remained still a moment, as if
ready to hear if I had anything more to say, and then quitted me with a
bow, slight but very gracious, saying it was well, and that he was
pleased with me.

I learnt afterwards that he said the same thing of me in the evening to
Chamillart, but, nevertheless, that he did not seem at all shaken in his
prejudice in favour of M. le Grand. The King was in fact very easy to
prejudice, difficult to lead back, and most unwilling to seek
enlightenment, or to listen to any explanations, if authority was in the
slightest degree at stake. Whoever had the address to make a question
take this shape, might be assured that the King would throw aside all
consideration of justice, right, and reason, and dismiss all evidence.
It was by playing on this chord that his ministers knew how to manage him
with so much art, and to make themselves despotic masters, causing him to
believe all they wished, while at the same time they rendered him
inaccessible to explanation, and to those who might have explained.

I have, perhaps, too much expanded an affair which might have been more
compressed. But in addition to the fact that I was mixed up in it, it is
by these little private details, as it seems to me, that the characters
of the Court and King are best made known.

In the early part of the next year, 1704., the King made La Queue, who
was a captain of cavalry, campmaster. This La Queue was seigneur of the
place of which he bore the name, distant six leagues from Versailles, and
as much from Dreux. He had married a girl that the King had had by a
gardener's wife. Bontems, the confidential valet of the King, had
brought about the marriage without declaring the names of the father or
the mother of the girl; but La Queue knew it, and promised himself a
fortune. The girl herself was tall and strongly resembled the King.
Unfortunately for her, she knew the secret of her birth, and much envied
her three sisters--recognised, and so grandly married. She lived on very
good terms with her husband--always, however,