and her decrees,
from which there was no appeal, either stamped a man with dishonour, or
introduced him as a first-rate candidate for universal admiration and
esteem, and her hatred was as much dreaded as ever her smiles had
been courted: for my own part, I always felt afraid of her, and never
willingly found myself in her presence.

After I had obtained for madame de Valentinois the boon I solicited, I
was conversing with the king respecting madame de Luxembourg, when the
chancellor entered the room; he came to relate to his majesty an affair
which had occasioned various reports, and much scandal. The viscount de
Bombelles, an officer in an hussar regiment, had married a mademoiselle
Camp, Reasons, unnecessary for me to seek to discover, induced him,
all at once, to annul his marriage, and profiting by a regulation which
forbade all good Catholics from intermarrying with those of the reformed
religion, He demanded the dissolution of his union with mademoiselle
Camp. This attempt on his part to violate, upon such grounds, the
sanctity of the nuptial vow, whilst it was calculated to rekindle the
spirit of religious persecution, was productive of very unfavourable
consequences to the character of M. de Bombelles; the great cry was
against him, he stood alone and unsupported in the contest, for even the
greatest bigots themselves would not intermeddle or appear to applaud a
matter which attacked both honour and good feeling: the comrades of M.
de Bombelles refused to associate with him; but the finishing stroke
came from his old companions at the military school, where he had
been brought up. On the 27th of November, 1771, the council of this
establishment wrote him the following letter:--

"The military school have perused with equal indignation and grief the
memorials which have appeared respecting you in the public prints.
Had you not been educated in this establishment, we should merely
have looked upon your affair with mademoiselle Camp as a scene too
distressing for humanity and it would have been buried in our peaceful
walls beneath the veil of modesty and silence; but we owe it to the
youth sent to us by his majesty, for the inculcation of those principles
which become the soldier as the man, not to pass over the present
opportunity of inspiring them with a just horror of your misguided
conduct, as well as feeling it an imperative duty to ourselves not
to appear indifferent to the scandal and disgraceful confusio