his short stay
there, seemed suspicious to the Abbe Dubois and his emissaries, or
whether he had corrupted some of the principal people of the Spanish
Ambassador and this Court, and learned that these young men were charged
with a packet of importance; whether there was no other mystery than the
bad company of the bankrupt banker, and that the anxiety of Dubois to
oblige his friends the English, induced him to arrest the three
travellers and seize their papers, lest the banker should have confided
his to the young men, I know not: but however it may have been, it is
certain that the Abbe Dubois arrested the three travellers at Poitiers,
and carried off their papers, a courier bringing these papers to him
immediately afterwards.

Great things sometimes spring from chance. The courier from Poitiers
entered the house of the Abbe Dubois just as the Regent entered the
opera. Dubois glanced over the papers, and went and related the news of
this capture to M. le Duc Orleans, as he left his box. This prince, who
was accustomed to shut himself up with his roues at that hour, did so
with a carelessness to which everything yielded, under pretext that
Dubois had not had sufficient time to examine all the papers. The first
few hours of the morning he was not himself. His head, still confused by
the fumes of the wine and by the undigested supper of the previous night,
was not in a state to understand anything, and the secretaries of state
have often told me that was the time they could make him sign anything.
This was the moment taken by Dubois to acquaint the Regent with as much
or as little of the contents of the papers as he thought fit. The upshot
of their interview was, that the Abbe was allowed by the Duc d'Orleans to
have the control of this matter entirely in his own hands.

The day after the arrival of the courier from Poitiers, Cellamare,
informed of what had occurred, but who flattered himself that the
presence of the banker had caused the arrest of the young men, and the
seizure of their papers, hid his fears under a very tranquil bearing, and
went, at one o'clock in the day, to M. le Blanc, to ask for a packet of
letters he had entrusted to Portocarrero and Monteleon on their return to
Spain. Le Blanc (who had had his lesson prepared beforehand by the Abbe
Dubois) replied that the packet had been seen; that it contained
important things, and that, far from being restored to him, he himself
must go back to his ho