On one occasion he wrote a comedy, entitled _La Cour du Roi Pétaud_, and coaxed his unsuspecting father to persuade the Comte de Saint-Florentin, the Minister of the King’s Household, to direct the Comédie-Italienne to produce it. The order was on the point of being sent, when one of Saint-Florentin’s secretaries, happening to glance through the play, discovered, to his horror, that it was nothing less than a clever and biting satire on certain idiosyncrasies of his Most Christian Majesty Louis XV. himself, which, had it been represented, would most certainly have entailed banishment or the Bastille on all concerned in its production.[16] On another, he appeared, at four o’clock in the morning, at the lodging of two poor but talented young chemists, hustled them into a coach which was in waiting, and carried them off to Sèvres, where he had a little house, in which he was in the habit of conducting his chemical experiments. Leading his companions to the laboratory, he addressed them as follows: “Messieurs, I wish you to make certain experiments; you will not leave this house until they are completed. Adieu; I shall return a week hence; you will find here everything you require; the servants have orders to attend to your wants; set to work.” So saying, he locked them in and went away. When he returned, the young chemists communicated to him the result of their labours, a discovery of some little importance, upon which he offered them a sum of money if they would agree to surrender to him the credit of having made it. “You,” said he, “have genius, and you want money. I have money, and I want genius. Let us strike a bargain. You shall have clothes to wear, and the glory shall be mine.” The young chemists consented, and Lauraguais went about boasting everywhere of the discovery he had made; and such, says Diderot, who tells the story, was his conceit that he soon succeeded in persuading himself that it was he to whom the credit really belonged, and that the young men had done nothing, except render him some merely mechanical assistance.[17] A third story of this extraordinary man is even more amusing than the preceding one. He appears to have had a theory that it would be possible for a person to support life entirely on a diet of forced fruit, provided that they were kept in the same temperature as was required for the production of what they consumed. He, therefore, persuaded one of his mistresses to allow herself to be shut up in a green-house and fed upon grapes, pine-apples, and so forth. This regimen, as may be supposed, did not agree with the lady, who soon declared that she was starving. “Ungrateful girl!” exclaimed the disgusted count. “Can you complain of not having sufficient to eat--a trivial matter at best--while you are thus abundantly supplied with the luxuries that every one longs for?”