istress, and by the
same party too, as you have heard.

After I was up again, and my child provided with a good nurse, and,
withal, winter coming on, it was proper to think of coming to Paris
again, which I did; but as I had now a coach and horses, and some
servants to attend me, by my lord's allowance, I took the liberty to
have them come to Paris sometimes, and so to take a tour into the garden
of the Tuileries and the other pleasant places of the city. It happened
one day that my prince (if I may call him so) had a mind to give me some
diversion, and to take the air with me; but, that he might do it and not
be publicly known, he comes to me in a coach of the Count de ----, a
great officer of the court, attended by his liveries also; so that, in a
word, it was impossible to guess by the equipage who I was or who I
belonged to; also, that I might be the more effectually concealed, he
ordered me to be taken up at a mantua-maker's house, where he sometimes
came, whether upon other amours or not was no business of mine to
inquire. I knew nothing whither he intended to carry me; but when he was
in the coach with me, he told me he had ordered his servants to go to
court with me, and he would show me some of the _beau monde_. I told him
I cared not where I went while I had the honour to have him with me. So
he carried me to the fine palace of Meudon, where the Dauphin then was,
and where he had some particular intimacy with one of the Dauphin's
domestics, who procured a retreat for me in his lodgings while we
stayed there, which was three or four days.

While I was there the king happened to come thither from Versailles, and
making but a short stay, visited Madame the Dauphiness, who was then
living. The prince was here incognito, only because of his being with
me, and therefore, when he heard that the king was in the gardens, he
kept close within the lodgings; but the gentleman in whose lodgings we
were, with his lady and several others, went out to see the king, and I
had the honour to be asked to go with them.

After we had seen the king, who did not stay long in the gardens, we
walked up the broad terrace, and crossing the hall towards the great
staircase, I had a sight which confounded me at once, as I doubt not it
would have done to any woman in the world. The horse guards, or what
they call there the _gens d'armes_, had, upon some occasion, been either
upon duty or been reviewed, or something (I did not understand t