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 writing?
They have got the pieces of all the mischievous Spanish letters written by the same hand, and corrected by that of the Cardinal de Polignac, so that there can be no doubt of his having composed them.
A manifesto, too, has been found in Malezieux's papers. It is well written, but not improved by the translation. Malezieux pretends that he only translated it before it was sent hence to Spain.
Mademoiselle de Montauban and Mademoiselle de Launay, a person of some wit, who has kept up a correspondence with Fontenelle, and who was 'femme de chambre' to the Duchesse du Maine, have both been sent to the Bastille.
The Duc du Maine now repents that he followed his wife's advice; but it seems that he only followed the worst part of it.