this, save
at second-hand. If I had, without pretending to be very clever, I must
say that I should have mistrusted this fine scheme. The King of England
could not be ignorant with what care and with what jealousy the Queen and
Alberoni kept the King of Spain locked up, inaccessible to everybody--and
that the certain way to fail, was to try to speak to him without their
knowledge, in spite of them, or unaided by them. However, my opinion
upon this point was not asked, and accordingly was not given.

Louville was the secret agent whom the Regent determined to send. He had
already been in Spain, had gained the confidence of the King, and knew
him better than any other person who could have been chosen. Precisely
because of all these reasons, I thought him the most unfit person to be
charged with this commission. The more intimate he had been with the
King of Spain, the more firm in his confidence, the more would he be
feared by the Queen and Alberoni; and the more would they do to cover his
embassy with failure, so as to guard their credit and their authority.
I represented my views on this subject to Louville, who acknowledged
there was truth in them, but contented himself with saying, that he had
not in his surprise dared to refuse the mission offered to him; and that
if he succeeded in it, the restitution to Spain of such an important
place as Gibraltar, would doubtless be the means of securing to him large
arrears of pensions due to him from Philip the First: an object of no
small importance in his eyes. Louville, therefore, in due time departed
to Madrid, on his strange and secret embassy.

Upon arriving he went straight to the house of the Duc de Saint-Aignan,
our ambassador, and took up his quarters there. Saint-Aignan who had
received not the slightest information of his arriving, was surprised
beyond measure at it. Alberoni was something more than surprised.
As fortune would have it, Louville when at some distance from Madrid was
seen by a courier, who straightway told Alberoni of the circumstance.
As may be imagined, tormented as Alberoni was by jealousy and suspicion,
this caused him infinite alarm. He was quite aware who Louville was;
the credit he had attained with the King of Spain; the trouble Madame
des Ursins and the deceased Queen had had to get him out of their way;
the fear, therefore, that he conceived on account of this unexpected
arrival, was so great that he passed all bounds, in order to free hims