CHAPTER I.
Victories of the Russians.—Altercation with France.—Position of the Duc de Choiseul.—Origin of his Power.—His Character.—Madame du Barry.—Her Influence opposed to that of the Duc.—Opposition to her Presentation at Court, which is at last effected.—General Dislike of the New Favourite.—Cabal against the Duc de Choiseul.—His Imprudent Conduct.—Projects for Restoring the Finances.—Trial of the Duc D’Aiguillon.—Anecdote of the Prince of Beauvau.—Extraordinary Letter of Louis the Fifteenth.
1769.
Thus ended the year 1769, leaving a prospect of very gloomy scenes at hand. In the last reign the House of Lords had acquired a great ascendant in the legislature; at the beginning of the present, the Crown had aimed at, and well nigh attained, an increase of the prerogative. The people were now grown formidable both to the King and Lords, and openly attacked the House of Commons, their best real support. Against all the branches of the legislature the contest was certainly unequal, but the vibrations of the balance proved how nicely the constitution was poised. Yet so tremulous an equilibrium made it the more to be feared that one or other of the scales might preponderate. The union of all three against the people, by the Lords and Commons being sold to the King, was still more formidable. I shall conclude the history of the year with what relates to foreign politics.
The tide was turned in favour of the Russians. The victorious Grand Vizir, who had checked their success, was removed by an intrigue of the Seraglio; and his successor rashly venturing to give battle, was defeated with great loss: Choczim was taken, and Prince Gallitzin, who had been recalled on a notion of having failed, destroyed the Turkish army before he received the news of his disgrace. France and Spain were tempted to molest the Russian fleet as it should pass through the Mediterranean; and, as it was received and favoured in our ports, it was not improbable but the three powers would be drawn into the vortex of the war. We had actually subsisting with France a quarrel that disposition to a rupture would easily have blown up into very serious discussion. A French ship had come into one of our ports, but refused to lower her pendant. On being fired at, the French captain continued to refuse striking the pendant, but declared himself our prize. France presented a strong memorial, and threatened reprisals. A parallel case had happened in Sir Robert Walpole’s time, who had yielded the point by breaking the captain for one day, and promoting him the next. At this time a vigorous answer was returned, and in harsher terms than Mr. Conway thought necessary, who asking Lord Weymouth at Council if he had looked into the former case, he replied, No—and sent away the memorial without examining it. Lord Weymouth, as will appear hereafter, was not apt to avoid hostile measures.[1] Two thousand sailors were ordered to be raised: but so inattentive were the Ministers to any system, and so impossible was it for naval commanders, or West Indian governors to obtain the shortest moments of audience, that this fervour of flippant resolution seemed a mere tribute to national clamour, not the consequence of any methodical determination.
The situation of the Duc de Choiseul dispelled those clouds. Prone as he was to attack us, and impatiently as he wished for occasions of signalizing his ambitious genius, his master’s pacific and indolent humanity, the embarrassed state of the French finances, and the storm ready to burst on his own head, left Choiseul neither means nor power of embroiling Europe farther. Their funds were deficient, their army not paid, and the Prime Minister was too extravagant and too volatile to attend to details of economy, or to strike out any considerable plans of frugality. He could neither find resources, nor men who could find any. D’Invau,[2] an honest man, whom he had made Comptroller-General, fairly abandoned the trial in less than a year. It was a strange succedaneum on which the Duke pitched, and which in a man less mercurial would have spoken despair. He refused to select a new Comptroller, and told the King that the Chancellor ought to choose one,—thus screening himself from blame if the successor should fail, as was most probable; but at the same time certain, that a man placed by his enemy would not, if successful, prove a friend to one that had not recommended him. Maupeou, the Chancellor, was a very able man, as false as Choiseul was indiscreetly frank, and had long been that Duke’s most shameless flatterer.[3] The Duke’s true friends had warned him against raising Maupeou from the post of Vice-Chancellor to that of Chancellor. Choiseul did not deny that there was danger in it, but said, no other man was fit for the post. Choiseul presumed on maintaining ascendant enough to control him. Maupeou, too, did not want confidence, but his was backed by art and method. Choiseul despised his enemies—Maupeou despised nothing but principles.
The Duc de Choiseul, denying all hostile intentions in his Court, offered to allow us to send a person to Toulon to see that no preparations for war were carrying on there; and before the end of the year, the Comte du Châtelet returned to England to confirm the pacific assurances that had been given.
As the interior of the Court of France is scarce known in this country, a short account of the intrigues at the time I am describing, may be a present not unacceptable to posterity. I passed many months at Paris in four different years, had very intimate connections there with persons of the first rank, and of various factions; and I spent five evenings in a week with the Duchesse de Choiseul and her select friends in the summer of 1769. The Duke was often of the party; and his levity and her anxiety on his account let me into many secrets, and explained enough of the rest to make me sufficiently master of the critical situation of the Minister at that time. I must take up his story a little farther back to make it perfectly intelligible.
Madame de Pompadour, who to the end of her life governed Louis XV. by habit, by which he was always governed, had established the Duc de Choiseul in the Ministry, and left him in possession of the chief share of power. Cardinal de Fleury and she had been successively absolute: but the King had never resigned himself entirely to anybody else. The Duc de Choiseul had quick parts, and dispatched business with the same rapidity that he conceived it. His ambition was boundless, his insolence ungoverned,[4] his discretion unrestrained, his love of pleasure and dissipation predominant even over his ambition. He was both an open enemy and a generous one, and had more joy in attacking his foes than in punishing them. Whether from gaiety or presumption, he never was dismayed. His vanity made him always depend on the success of his plans; and his spirits made him soon forget the miscarriage of them. He had no idea of national or domestic economy, which being a quality of prudence and providence, could not enter into so audacious a mind. He would project and determine the ruin of a country, but could not meditate a little mischief, or a narrow benefit. In private his sallies and good humour were pleasing, and would have been more pleasing if his manner had not been overbearing and self-sufficient. The latter created him enemies; the former, friends.[5] Among the first were the Maréchal de Richelieu and the Duc d’Aiguillon. To the impertinence of a fashionable old beau,[6] Richelieu added all the little intrigues and treacheries of a Court, having tried every method but merit to raise himself to the first post. At past seventy he still flattered himself with the vision of pleasing women[7] and governing the King, because the King at near sixty had not done being pleased with women. The Duc d’Aiguillon[8] was universally abhorred. His abominable tyranny and villany in his Government of Bretagne had made him dreaded; and his ambition being much superior to his abilities, he had betrayed the badness of his heart before he had reached the object to which he aspired.[9] The Duc de Choiseul despised Richelieu, and had kept down d’Aiguillon. They were connected before; their resentments and views united them more intimately, but it was the contemptible one that shook their antagonist’s power.
There was a Comte du Barry, said to be of a noble family.[10] It was much more certain that he was a sharper and a pimp, nominally to the Maréchal, frequently so to the young English that resorted to Paris, where he furnished them with opera girls, and drew them into gaming. Two years before he was known for loftier intrigues, the Lieutenant de Police civilly warned some English lords not to haunt Du Barry’s house, lest he should find them there when, as he expected, he should be forced to visit a place so scandalous. Du Barry, in quest of a more plentiful harvest, came to London, and exercised his vocation at taverns. In his Parisian seraglio, was a well-made girl of the town, not remarkably pretty, called Mademoiselle L’Ange. After passing through every scene of prostitution, this nymph was pitched upon by the Cabal for overturning the ascendant of Choiseul. To ensure her attachment to them, and to qualify her for the post she was to occupy in the State,[11] they began with marrying her to the brother of her pander, Du Barry. The next step was to prevail on Belle, the King’s first valet de chambre, and first minister of his private hours, to introduce her to the Monarch. After such a succession of beauties as he had known, and no stranger to the most dissolute, too, the King was caught with such moderate charms, which had not even the merit of coming to his arms in their first bloom.
At first a sort of mystery was observed. But the fair one gained ground rapidly, and Solomon soon began to chant the perfections of his beloved. The Court was shocked to hear to what an idol of clay they were to address their homage. They were accustomed to bow down before a mistress—but took it into their heads that the disgrace consisted in her being a common girl of the town. The King’s daughters, who had borne the ascendant of Madame de Pompadour in their mother’s life, grew outrageous, though she was dead, at the new favourite, for being of the lowest class of her profession; and instead of regarding this amour as only ridiculous, treated it with a serious air of disobedience, that would have offended any man but so indulgent and weak a father, or a very wise one. The poor King blushed, and by turns hesitated and exalted his mistress. In private the scene was childish: his aged Majesty and his indelicate concubine romped, pelted one another with sugarplums, and were much oftener silly than amorous. The Faction did not sleep: the next point was that Madame du Barry should be presented publicly. The King promised: her clothes and liveries were made.
Instead of attempting to remove or buy the new mistress, the Duc de Choiseul’s conduct was as imprudent and rash as the King’s was pitiful. He spoke of Madame du Barry publicly, without decency or management; which being quickly carried to her, and she complaining of it, he said at his own table, before a large company:—“Madame du Barry est très mal informée; on ne parle pas de catins chez moi.” The King’s irresolution and the Minister’s insolence, suspended the abjection of the courtiers. Even the men avoided the mistress; and when the King proposed to carry any of them to her, they excused themselves, slipped away, or were silent. Had they never been mean, such conduct had been noble.
In this suspense, inquiry was made for some lady of great rank to present the new Countess. Not one could be found that would stoop to that office. Maréchal Richelieu was forced to fetch an obscure lady from Bordeaux. The presentation, however, was delayed. Madame, the eldest of the King’s daughters, took to her bed, and protested she would not receive the mistress. This stopped it for some time. The Duc de la Vauguion, Governor of the Dauphin, a great bigot and partisan of the Jesuits, went to Madame, and advised her to be civil to the Countess. She asked him if he came by the King’s orders? He said, No, but as a well-wisher to her Royal Highness. She bade him instantly quit the room: and the hypocrite reaped nothing but the shame of having prostituted himself to so scandalous an office for the good of the Church—the zealot party hoping everything from the rising Cabal—and, in fact, as despotism soon took such strides under the new influence, enthusiasm had reason to flatter itself with a restoration, too, under a doating Prince, a common strumpet, an old debauchee, and a profligate swindler, aided by such adjuncts as the Head of the Law and D’Aiguillon, who breathed the very spirit of the Inquisition. This junto soon called a female saint to their counsels, the Carmelite Louisa, the King’s youngest daughter; and the poor Monarch divided his leisure between Capreœ and Mount Carmel.
In the meantime the Duc de Choiseul went so far as to talk of resigning, if the presentation took place. Arrogant as he was, this bravery was not solely of his own growth, but inspired by the women of his connection. Of all human kind, there were not two beings so insolent as his own sister, the Duchesse de Grammont, and her friend, the Princesse de Beauvau.[12] These amazons took it into their heads to brave the King and his mistress; and, though the creatures of favour, were so transported by this imaginary heroism, that they urged the Duke to resign in defiance. This impertinence in Madame de Grammont was absurd beyond measure. Subsisting but by her brother’s power, abhorred for her haughtiness, suspected of many gallantries, and notorious for one that ought to have been the most secret, what could she expect from his fall but universal neglect? The Princess, no Penelope, was hurried on by equal impetuosity, and by rancour, to another person, whom I shall mention presently: yet, divested of their passions, both these viragos had uncommonly good understandings. There was a third person, who it was more surprising took the same line, though regulated by the same decency that governed all her actions. This was the Duchesse de Choiseul, a woman in whom industrious malice could not find an imperfection, unless that charming one of studying to be a complete character. She was too virtuous to fear reproach or contagion from civilities to the mistress, and should have left it to the Duchess and Princess to be disdainful prudes.[13] Yet in a quiet style she was not less earnest than they in soliciting her husband not to bend to the ignominy of the hour. The King, who, by a singular situation, opened all letters, having the chief postmaster his own creature, and not the Minister’s, read the Duchesse’s importunities with her husband; and as he had expected more duty from her, resented her behaviour more than that of the two other dames.
After an anxious suspense of three months, and when the public began to think the presentation warded off, it suddenly took place. The King returning from hunting, found (no doubt by concert) Maréchal Richelieu, who was in waiting in the outward room with a letter in his hand. The King asked what it was? “Sire,” said the Duke, “it is from Madame du Barry, who desires the honour of being presented to your Majesty.” “With all my heart,” replied the King; “she may come to morrow, if she pleases.” This was said aloud. The Duc de Choiseul and Versailles learnt the news at the same moment. Next day all Paris was there to see the ceremony.
Notwithstanding such indications of the Cabal being possessed of the King’s confidence without the privity of the Minister, the faction of the latter had established such a tone, that the person of all France who seemed most in disgrace, was the new mistress. The men, indeed, began by degrees to drop their visits at her apartment, and then sparingly to appear at her toilet. The women shunned her as they do an unhappy young damsel, who has fallen a victim to a first and real passion. At Marly, in the very salon with the King, it was a solitude round his mistress: and one or two of the ladies attending the Mesdames deigning to leave their names at her door, were scratched out of the list for Marly by Madame. On the other hand, the Duchesses de Choiseul and Grammont and the Princesse de Beauvau, refusing to stoop even to that piece of form, were totally excluded from the King’s suppers. Instead of being mortified, they engaged all their female relations in the same insult.
It became necessary for the King to form a new set of company; yet all his authority could assemble but five or six women of rank, and those of the most decried characters, except the last I shall mention. There was Madame de l’Hôpital, an ancient mistress of the Prince de Soubize; the Comtesse de Valentinois, of the highest birth, very rich but very foolish, and as far from a Lucretia as Madame du Barry herself. Madame de Flavacourt was another, a suitable companion to both in virtue and understanding. She was sister to three of the King’s earliest mistresses, and had aimed at succeeding them. The Maréchale Duchesse de Mirepoix[14] was the last, and a very important acquisition. No man, no woman in France, had a superior understanding; and it was as agreeable as it was profound. Haughty, but supple, she could command respect even from those that knew her; and could transform herself into, or stoop to, any character that suited her views. All this art, all these talents, were drowned in such an overwhelming passion for play, that though she had long had singular credit with the King, she reduced her favour to an endless solicitation for money to pay her debts. Her constant necessities were a constant source of degrading actions. She had left off red, and acted devotion to attain the post of Dame d’Honneur to the Queen; the very next day she was seen riding backwards with Madame de Pompadour in the latter’s own coach. In one of her moments of poverty she had offended Choiseul by matching her nephew, the Prince d’Henin, with the daughter of Madame de Monconseil, a capital enemy of the Prime Minister, but rich and intriguing.[15] To accelerate the Prime Minister’s ruin, to secure her own favour, and in opposition to her sister-in-law, the Princesse de Beauvau, Madame de Mirepoix now united herself strictly, not only with the mistress, but with Maréchale Richelieu, who, having killed her first husband, the Prince of Lixin, thirty years before in a duel, had been obliged, as much as possible, to shun her company. But in all this scene of hatred and intrigue, nothing came up to the enmity between the Maréchale and the Princesse. That the latter boasted of it was not surprising. The former, as cool as the Princesse, was outrageous—confessed it too. The first fruits of her complaisance, was a gift of an hundred thousand livres from the King. One day she attempted to explain away this reward to her niece, Madame de Bussy. “It was promised to me,” said Madame de Mirepoix, “a year ago; but from the disorder of the finances I did not obtain it till now; but it was not in consideration of my attention to Madame du Barry.” “No surely, Madam,” replied the other; “it would not have been enough.”[16]
The King having gratified his mistress, was very desirous of preserving peace; and, as usual, unwilling to change his Minister. The Duc de Choiseul availed himself of this indolence, and, to re-establish the appearance of his credit, obtained the recall of the Parliament of Bretagne, the deepest wound he could inflict on the Duc d’Aiguillon. The latter returned the blow. The Duc de Chaulnes was dying;[17] D’Aiguillon treated with him for the purchase of the Chevaux legers, and secretly, by the mistress’s influence, obtained the King’s consent. The Duc de Choiseul laboured to defeat it, but in vain. Now again to prop his credit, he procured to have the Procureur-General du Châtelet sent to the Bastille, for announcing that he was to be Comptroller-General in four days. This was an able man, and a creature of the Cabal. The King, too, was prevailed on to say in council, that he heard there were reports of an approaching change in the ministry, and did he know the authors, he would thrust them into a dungeon. To revive their hopes, the mistress herself carried the Duc d’Aiguillon his new patent.
At the same time, probably by the King’s direction, in hopes of some accommodation, the mistress sent for the Duc de Choiseul. He replied, If she wanted him, she might come to him. She sent again that she was not dressed, and must see him. It was to ask preferment for that very postmaster that was his enemy. The Duke went; and though he staid an hour and a quarter with her, came away refusing her request; and leaving her, who had been only an instrument of the Cabal, an offended principal. The weakness of this conduct was the more remarkable, as he had the example of his immediate predecessor, the Cardinal de Bernis, before his eyes.[18] From an indigent, sonnet-writing abbé, Madame de Pompadour had raised Bernis to the Cardinalate, and to the office of Prime Minister. In six weeks he refused to wait on her in her apartment, as if incompatible with his sacred dignity—and as if ingratitude was compatible with it! In six days she sent him to his bishopric.[19]
At Fontainebleau, hostilities were carried very high, but came to no decision. It was known, that though the Duc de Choiseul had staid so long with the mistress, he had rather exasperated than softened her. When they were partners at whist with the King, she made faces and shrugged up her shoulders at the Minister. The King disapproved this, and forbade it. One night after the Court’s return to Versailles, the Maréchal de Soubize, playing against her, said to her on her scoring two by honours, “Non, Madame, vous n’aviez pas les honneurs; vous n’aviez que le roi.” The King laughed, and so did the mistress violently; it being said without design, by Monsieur de Soubize, who was extremely decent, and not hostile to her. Had he been her friend, he could have decided the contest at once to the ruin of Choiseul; for Soubize was better than any man with the King; and, had he not wanted ambition, might have been minister himself.
With all her antipathy to Monsieur de Choiseul, Madame de Mirepoix had too much parts not to be sensible of his, and of his engaging vivacity. One day, that to please her Madame du Barry was railing at the Duke, she caught herself, and said, “Mais comprenez vous, Madame, qu’on puisse tant hair un homme qu’on ne connoit pas?” Madame de Mirepoix replied, “Je le comprendois bien moins, Madame, si vous le commissiez”—as flattering and genteel a compliment as could be made by an enemy.
The desperate state of the finances brought the Duke as near to his ruin as the Cabal could do. His new Comptroller-General, to whom he paid unbounded court, to give him spirits, could, as everybody had foreseen, produce no effectual plan; and though he offered one, it was rejected by the majority of the Council. The man, who was upright, desired leave to retire, said he had done his best, and had neither enriched himself nor his friends. The King ordered Choiseul to name another. Aware of the difficulty, and to avoid furnishing his enemies with a new handle for accusing him of miscarriage, he threw the burthen off himself, saying, it was the Chancellor’s business. Maupeou, the Chancellor, named the Abbé du Terray, who immediately set out, with a violence and rigour beyond example, not only lessening pensions and grants by the half, but striking at the interest on the debt; and was on the point of blowing up the credit of France entirely, especially with foreign countries. Choiseul probably inflamed the bankers of the Court; and then harangued so ably in Council against such breach of faith, that he carried it against the Comptroller, to make good their foreign engagements, the King himself saying, every man must tax himself, and that he himself had two thousand louis-d’ors, and would give them to support public credit.[20] This victory, and the clamours of the sufferers, endeared Choiseul more than ever to the nation. At the same time he gave a dangerous wound to his capital enemy, the Duc D’Aiguillon, who, perceiving the horror he had raised, or that had been raised, by the story propagated of having attempted to have La Chalotais poisoned, petitioned the King to allow him to be tried for his conduct in his government of Bretagne. Choiseul, under pretence of justifying him, prevailed on the King, not only to consent, but to order the trial in his own presence at Paris, whither the Parliament was ordered to repair and be prosecutors,—a measure big with a cruel alternative; as, if guilty, the Duc D’Aiguillon would not be able to conceal his guilt from the King; and, if acquitted, the novelty of the trial, and the known partiality of his master, would seem to have screened him from conviction. The Parliament was very averse to this new mode, but was obliged to acquiesce; and so great vexation did the accused undergo, that at the very beginning of the trial it threw him into a jaundice. After the trial had gone on for many weeks, the King suddenly put a stop to it, forbade all further proceedings, declared his approbation of the Duc d’Aiguillon’s whole conduct, and that the latter had done nothing but by his orders, and for his service—a sentence, that left the public at liberty to surmise the worst, when the criminal did not dare to trust his cause even to so partial a protector! The sequel of these intrigues will appear in the following years.
I shall add, as notes to the foregoing account of the Court of France, some remarkable passages that will throw more light on it. I have mentioned the friendship of the Duchesse de Choiseul for Madame du Deffand. The Prince de Beauvau was so attached to the latter that he scarce ever missed seeing her one day when he was in Paris: and as I had known him above thirty years, and came so often to Paris and lived so much with them, he and the Princess talked their politics before me without reserve. One day in particular, after the Duc de Choiseul’s fall, and the removal of the Prince from his government of Languedoc in consequence, Madame du Deffand was expressing her fears to the Prince and Princess, that he would be removed also from his post of Captain of the King’s Guard. “Oh!” said the Prince, “the King will not take that from me for his own sake.” Madame du Deffand asked what he meant? “Why,” replied the Prince, “he would not think his person safe if I was not the Captain of his Guard. When Prince Charles passed the Rhine, I asked leave to go thither as a volunteer. The King would give me no answer for three days, and then refused me leave: he was afraid to be without me.” In short, they said such strong things, that I feared they would, on reflection, be sorry they had gone so far before a foreigner, and therefore, and that they might not think me curious, I rose and went into the next room. When I returned, the Princess, who was exceedingly quick-sighted, suspected my motive, and questioned me whether she had not penetrated me. When I owned she was in the right, “Now,” said she, “you think you have done a very civil thing, but you have done a very rude one; for if you thought these things that we have said too strong for you to hear, it is telling us that they were too strong for us to utter.”
With all this good sense, her haughtiness and violence were extreme. In 1775, on the Princesse de Lamballe being placed above the Princesse de Chimay in the Queen’s family, the Prince and Princesse de Beauvau would have had their niece, Madame de Chimay, quit her place rather than submit. Madame du Deffand disputed the point with them. I said nothing. When they were gone, Madame du Deffand asked me on which side I was. I said on her’s. “Then,” said she, “how could you be such a flatterer to them as not to take my part?” “Because,” said I, “you argued only on their duty to the King and Queen; but my reasons were too strong to be given. Monsieur de Beauvau, whose mother was mistress, and he himself a natural son of only a Duke of Lorraine, thinks it below his niece to give place to the Princesse de Lamballe, whose husband’s grandfather was a natural son of Louis Quatorze!”[21]
But the most extraordinary anecdote was the following letter, which Louis the Fifteenth, when he was endeavouring to pacify the civil war in his Court between Madame du Barry and the Duc de Choiseul, wrote to the latter. It is so extraordinary, his Majesty even hinting a possibility of his marrying his mistress, that I must give an account how it came into my hands. It was read to Madame du Deffand by the Duc or Duchesse de Choiseul, but they would not give her a copy. However, as she heard it more than once, she dictated to her secretary as many of the passages as she could remember, but disguised the names under Persian names for fear of losing the paper or having it found in her possession. That copy she gave me, which I here set down, I solemnly protest, word for word as I received it. It is a striking picture of that Monarch’s character, full of weakness, good-humour, frankness;—and still more of his love of quiet and disinclination to change a Minister he was used to.
* * * * *
“Anecdotes Persannes.
“Sapor, Sultan de Perse, écrivit une lettre fort singulière à son Atemadoulet, dont voici quelques fragmens:
“‘Vous connoissez mal la personne que j’aime; vous êtes environné de gens qui vous préviennent contre elle: ne les ecoutez point, il y a long tems qu’ils me déplaisent. Je vous promets de vous mettre bien avec celle que j’aime, et de détruire toutes les préventions qu’on veut lui donner contre vous. Je vous dirai confidemment que je ne puis me passer de femmes. Celle ci me plait, et si je l’épousois, tout le monde tomberoit à ses genoux. Le Mogol,[22] voulant se marier, et voulant épouser une belle femme, fit plusieurs voyages sans rencontrer ce qu’il cherchoit. Je vous le répète, je ne puis me passer de femmes; mais il m’en faut une belle. La sœur du Mogol,[23] que je pourrois épouser, ne l’est pas. La personne, avec qui je vis, me plait; consentez à bien vivre avec elle; rien n’est plus aisé, et vous m’obligerez infiniment.’
“L’Atemadoulet resista; et quelques mois après il fut disgracié.” Madame du Deffand adds, “J’oubliois un trait de cette lettre; ‘je ne veux point une femme de qualité: je ne veux point non plus à l’exemple de Thamas,[24] mon ayeul, une matrone.’”
Perhaps it will not be thought very wise in the Duc de Choiseul to have resisted such a letter. Should the original ever appear, as is not impossible, it will corroborate the truth of the rest that I have related. I trust much to collateral evidence for confirming the veracity of these Memoirs.