to which I belonged
restored to the position it deserved to occupy.

It is difficult to express what I felt in quitting the Dauphin. A
magnificent and near future opened out before me. I saw a prince, pious,
just, debonnaire, enlightened, and seeking to become more so; with
principles completely in accord with my own, and capacity to carry out
those principles when the time for doing so arrived. I relished
deliciously a confident so precious and so full upon the most momentous
matters and at a first interview. I felt all the sweetness of this
perspective, and of my deliverance from a servitude which, in spite of
myself, I sometimes could not help showing myself impatient of. I felt,
too, that I now had an opportunity of elevating myself, and of
contributing to those grand works, for the happiness and advantage of the
state I so much wished to see accomplished.

A few days after this I had another interview with the Dauphin. I was
introduced secretly as before, so that no one perceived either my coming
or my departure. The same subjects we had previously touched upon we now
entered into again, and more amply than on the former occasion. The
Dauphin, in taking leave of me, gave me full permission to see him in
private as often as I desired, though in public I was still to be
circumspect.

Indeed there was need of great circumspection in carrying on even private
intercourse with the Dauphin. From this time I continually saw him in
his cabinet, talking with him in all liberty upon the various persons of
the Court, and upon the various subjects relating to the state; but
always with the same secrecy as at first. This was absolutely necessary;
as I have just said, I was still in a sort of half disgrace the King did
not regard me with the eyes of favour; Madame de Maintenon was resolutely
averse to me. If they two had suspected my strict intimacy with the heir
to the throne, I should have been assuredly lost.

To show what need there was of precaution in my private interviews with
the Dauphin, let me here recall an incident which one day occurred when
we were closeted together, and which might have led to the greatest
results. The Prince lodged then in one of the four grand suites of
apartments, on the same level as the Salon, the suite that was broken up
during an illness of Madame la Princesse de Conti, to make way for a
grand stair case, the narrow and crooked one in use annoying the King
when he ascended i