the priests
would retire. One of them seemed very melancholy, but the other laughed
as if he would burst his sides. This was the Duc de Richelieu; the other
was the Chevalier de Guemene, the younger son of the Duke of that name.
The gentlemen themselves divulged the adventure.

The King's illegitimate children, fearing that they should be treated in
the same way as the Princes of the blood, have for some months past been
engaged in drawing a strong party of the nobility to their side, and have
presented a very unjust petition against the Dukes and Peers. My son has
refused to receive this petition, and has interdicted them from holding
assemblies, the object of which he knows would tend to revolt. They
have, nevertheless, continued them at the instigations of the Duc du
Maine and his wife, and have even carried their insolence so far as to
address a memorial to my son and another to the Parliament, in which they
assert that it is within the province of the nobility alone to decide
between the Princes of the blood and the legitimated Princes. Thirty of
them have signed this memorial, of whom my son has had six arrested;
three of them have been sent to the Bastille, and the other three to
Vincennes; they are MM. de Chatillon, de Rieux, de Beaufremont, de
Polignac, de Clermont, and d'O. The last was the Governor of the Comte
de Toulouse, and remains with him. Clermont's wife is one of the
Duchesse de Berri's ladies. She is not the most discreet person in the
world, and has been long in the habit of saying to any one who would
listen to her, "Whatever may come of it, my husband and I are willing to
risk our lives for the Comte de Toulouse." It is therefore evident that
all this proceeds from the bastards. But I must expose still further the
ingratitude of these people. Chatillon is a poor gentleman, whose father
held a small employment under M. Gaston, one of those offices which
confer the privilege of the entree to the antechambers, and the holders
of which do not sit in the carriage with their masters. The two
descendants, as they call themselves, of the house of Chatillon, insist
that this Chatillon, who married an attorney's daughter, is descended
from the illegitimate branches of that family. His son was a subaltern
in the Body Guard. In the summer time, when the young officers went to
bathe, they used to take young Chatillon with them to guard their
clothes, and for this office they gave him a crown for h