This account made me shudder; for I own I had then formed a design of winning the heart of that Prince. I was afraid that he was so used to change, as to be past all constancy.

I even, then, blushed at the thought of giving myself up to an inclination of no farther consequence than a momentary gratification of the senses; but was fixed on my design.

I had often seen the King at Versailles, without being perceived by him; our looks had never met; my eyes had a great deal to say, but had no opportunity of explaining my desires. At length I had an interview with the Monarch, and, for the first time, talked with him in private. There is no expressing what passed in me at this first conversation; fear, hope, and admiration, successively agitated my soul. The King soon dispelled my confusion; for Lewis XV. is certainly the most affable Prince in his court, if not in the whole world. In private discourse his rank lays no restraint, and all ideas of the throne are suspended; an air of candour and goodness diffuses itself through every part of his behaviour; in short, he can forget that he is a King, to be the more a gentleman.

Our conversation was to me all charming: I pleased and was pleased. The King has since owned to me, that he loved me from that first interview. It was there agreed that we should see one another privately at Versailles: he was very much for my immediately coming to an apartment in the palace: he even insisted on it; but I begged he would give me leave to remain still incognito for some time; and the King, being the most polite man in France, yielded to my request. On my return to Paris, a thousand fresh emotions rose in my breast. A strange thing is the human heart! we feel the effects of those passions of which we know not the cause. I am still at a loss whether I loved the King from this first meeting: that it gave me infinite pleasure, I know; but pleasure is not always a consequence of love. We are susceptible of a multitude of other passions, which may produce the like effect.

I experienced a thousand delights in our secret intercourse: little do I wonder that Madame de la Valiere, in the infancy of her amours with Lewis XIV. was so transported with the sole enjoyment of that Monarch’s affection: but at length, the King requiring that I should live at Versailles, I complied with his desire.

Now was my first appearance at court. Very faint and imperfect are the descriptions which books give of this grand theatre. I thought myself amidst another species of mortals: I observed that their manners and usages are not the same; and that in regard to dress, deportment, and language, the inhabitants of Versailles are entirely different from those of Paris. Every courtier, besides his personal character, frames to himself another, under which he acts his several parts. In town, virtue and vice are streightened; here both range at large. The passions are the stronger, as they happen to be at the source of the means of gratifying them. Private interest, from whence they derive all their activity, is there in its centre. The Prince’s favour gives life and motion to the courtier’s soul: without a beam from the throne, it is all a horrid gloom.

To appear with dignity on this theatre, where I was an utter stranger, I saw that it behoved me to make it my first care to examine into the temper of those actors who played the capital parts.

Of his Majesty I knew nothing, but by common report; and that, when it relates to a reigning Prince, is generally wrong; either flattery attributing too many virtues to him, or malevolence charging him with too many vices.

Lewis XV. is endowed with great natural parts, a surprising quickness of apprehension, and solidity of judgment. He, at once, discerns the springs which give motion to the most complicated affairs of politics: he knows all the weaknesses of the general system, and the faults of each particular administration. This Prince has a noble and exalted soul: the blood of the legislator, the hero, and the warrior, runs in his veins; but a narrow education has stifled the effect of these advantages. Cardinal Fleury, having not one great principle in himself, trained this Prince to nothing but trifles: yet this unequal education did not extinguish in him the most amiable qualities which can adorn a Sovereign. It is impossible to exceed the goodness of Lewis XV’s heart: he is humane, mild, affable, compassionate, just, delighting in good, a declared enemy to every thing which does not bear the stamp of honour and probity, &c. &c.

Singular likewise are the virtues of the Queen: she has laid all domestic hardships at the foot of the cross; so far from lamenting a fate, which would have embittered the whole life of another Princess, she considers it as a particular favour of Heaven, from a persuasion that Providence is pleased to try her firmness in this life, in order to confer the greater reward on her in the next. None of those fretful words which speak a rankled heart ever came from her: she dwells with pleasure on the King’s eminent qualities, and draws a veil over his weaknesses: she never speaks of him but with a sensible respect and veneration: it is impossible for any lady to carry Christian perfection to a higher degree, and to concenter so many qualities in a rank, where the least defects efface the greatest virtues.