hey pretended to be much
afflicted at it, and requested permission to perform the last duties to
her, and to be present at her funeral. They were believed to be sincere,
and the permission they asked was readily granted them. In the funeral
procession it was perceived that, besides the two ladies, there were two
other persons whom no one knew. Upon being asked who they were, they
replied they were poor priests in need of protection; and that, having
learnt two Duchesses were to be present at the funeral, they had come to
the convent for the purpose of imploring their good offices. When they
were presented to them, the young ladies said they would interrogate them
after the service in their chambers. The young priests waited upon them
at the time appointed, and stayed there until the evening. The Abbess,
who began to think their audience was too long, sent to beg 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 m