the frontiers to wait for
Alberoni, accompanying him until the moment of his embarkation in
Provence for Italy; with orders never to lose sight of him, to make him
avoid the large towns and principal places as much as possible; suffer no
honours to be rendered to him; above all, to hinder him from
communicating with anybody, or anybody with him; in a word, to conduct
him civilly, like a prisoner under guard.

Morcieu executed to the letter this disagreeable commission; all the more
necessary, because, entirely disgraced as was Alberoni, everything was to
be forced from him while traversing a great part of France, where all who
were adverse to the Regent might have recourse to him. Therefore it was
not without good reason that every kind of liberty was denied him.

It may be imagined what was suffered by a man so impetuous, and so
accustomed to unlimited power; but he succeeded in accommodating himself
to such a great and sudden change of condition; in maintaining his self-
possession; in subjecting himself to no refusals; in being sage and
measured in his manners; very reserved in speech, with an air as though
he cared for nothing; and in adapting himself to everything without
questions, without pretension, without complaining, dissimulating
everything, and untiringly pretending to regard Morcieu as an
accompaniment of honour. He received, then, no sort of civility on the
part of the Regent, of Dubois, or of anybody; and performed the day's
journeys, arranged by Morcieu, without stopping, almost without suite,
until he arrived on the shores of the Mediterranean, where he immediately
embarked and passed to the Genoa coast.

Alberoni, delivered of his Argus, and arrived in Italy, found himself in
another trouble by the anger of the Emperor, who would suffer him
nowhere, and by the indignation of the Court of Rome, which prevailed, on
this occasion, over respect for the purple. Alberoni for a long time was
forced to keep out of the way, hidden and a fugitive, and was not able to
approach Rome until the death of the Pope. The remainder of the life of
this most extraordinary man is not a subject for these memoirs. But what
ought not to be forgotten is the last mark of rage, despair, and madness
that he gave in traversing France. He wrote to M. le Duc d'Orleans,
offering to supply him with the means of making a most dangerous war
against Spain; and at Marseilles, ready to embark, he again wrote to
reiterate the same