“With money and promises everything can be managed at court. There is no place where they know better how to value complaisance, and the price at which it is sold. Do not give yourself any uneasiness; we shall find the lady we want.”
And we did find her, but her compliance was dearly bought. Two ladies who were applied to stipulated for most outrageous conditions. One, the marquise de Castellane, consented to present me, but demanded that she should be created a duchess, and have a gift of five hundred thousand livres: the other, whose name I forget, asked for her husband the order of the Holy Ghost and a government, a regiment for her son, and for herself I forget what. These ladies seemed to think, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, that governments and five hundred thousand livres were to be picked up on the highway. In truth, they spoke out without disguise.
At this juncture the chancellor had a singular conversation concerning me with the Choiseuls. He had been one morning to call on the duke, and whilst they were discoursing, the duchesse de Grammont came into her brother’s apartment, and entered at once into conversation.
“Ah, my lord, I am glad to see you. Your new friends carry you off from your old ones. You are wrong to adore the rising sun.”
“That was the idolatry of a great number of persons: but I beg of you to be so very kind as not to speak to me in figures, if you would wish me to understand you.”
“Oh, you play off the ignorant. You know as well as I do what I mean, and your daily visits to this fille.”
“Which, madame? There are so many at court!”
This sarcastic reply made the brother and sister smile; both of them being fully competent to understand the merit of an epigram. The duke fearing lest the duchess should go too far, judging by what she had already said, thus addressed him:
“You are, then, one of the adorers of the comtesse du Barry?”
“Yes, monsieur le duc; and would to God that, for your own interest, you would be so too!”