tch me. The bonds which united me to M. le Duc d'Orleans had always
been so strong that the prime minister, who knew their strength, did not
dare to flatter himself he could break them. His resource was to try to
disgust me by inducing his master to treat me with a reserve which was
completely new to him, and which cost him more than it cost me; for, in
fact, he had often found my confidence very useful to him, and had grown
accustomed to it. As for me, I dispensed with his friendship more than
willingly, vexed at being no longer able to gather any fruit from it for
the advantage of the State or himself, wholly abandoned as he was to his
Paris pleasures and to his minister. The conviction of my complete
inutility more and more kept me in the background, without the slightest
suspicion that different conduct could be dangerous to me, or that, weak
and abandoned to Dubois as was the Regent, the former could ever exile
me, like the Duc de Roailles, and Cariillac, or disgust me into exiling
myself. I followed, then, my accustomed life. That is to say, never saw
M. le Duc d'Orleans except tete-a-tete, and then very seldom at intervals
that each time grew longer, coldly, briefly, never talking to him of
business, or, if he did to me, returning the conversation, and replying
it! a manner to make it drop. Acting thus, it is easy to see that I was
mixed up in nothing, and what I shall have to relate now will have less
of the singularity and instructiveness of good and faithful memoirs, than
of the dryness and sterility of the gazettes.

First of all I will finish my account of Cardinal Dubois. I have very
little more to say of him; for he had scarcely begun to enjoy his high
honours when Death came to laugh at him for the sweating labour he had
taken to acquire them.

On the 11th of June, 1723, the King went to reside at Meudon, ostensibly
in order that the chateau of Versailles might be cleared--in reality,
to accommodate Cardinal Dubois. He had just presided over the assembly
of the day, and flattered to the last degree at this, wished to repose
upon the honour. He desired, also, to be present sometimes at the
assembling of the Company of the Indies. Meudon brought him half-way to
Paris, and saved him a journey. His debauchery had so shattered his
health that the movement of a coach gave him pains which he very
carefully hid.

The King held at Meudon a review of his household, which in his pride the
Cardinal must