The friendship with which he honored me was not agreeable to my enemies; and they tried by every possible means to seduce him from me. They got his near relations to talk to him about it; his intimate friends to reason with him; the females whom he most admired to dissuade him from it. There was not one of these latter who did not essay to injure me in his estimation, by saying that he dishonored himself by an acquaintance with me. There was amongst others a marquise de Beauvoir, the issue of a petty nobility, whom he paid with sums of gold, altho’ she was not his mistress by title. Gained over by the Choiseuls, she made proposals concerning me to the prince of so ridiculous a nature, that he said to her impatiently: “I’ faith, my dear, as in the eyes of the world every woman who lives with a man who is not her husband is a ------, so I think a man is wise to choose the loveliest he can find; and in this way the king is at this moment much better off than any of his subjects.” Only imagine what a rage this put the marquise de Beauvoir in: she stormed, wept, had a nervous attack. The comte de la Marche contemplated her with a desperate tranquillity; but this scene continuing beyond the limits of tolerable patience, he was so tired of it that he left her. This was not what the marquise wished; and she hastened to write a submissive letter to him, in which, to justify herself, she confessed to the prince, that in acting against me she had only yielded to the instigations of the cabal, and particularly alluded to mesdames de Grammont and de Guémenée. The comte de la Marche showed me this letter, which I retained in spite of his resistance and all the efforts he made to obtain possession of it again. My intention was to show it to the king; and I did not fail to give it to him at the next visit he paid me: he read it, and shrugging up his shoulders, as was his usual custom, he said to me, “They are devils incarnate, and the worst of the kind. They try to injure you in every way, but they shall not succeed. I receive also anonymous letters against you, they are tossed into the post-box in large packets with feigned names, in the hope that they will reach me. Such slanders ought not to annoy you: in the days of madame de Pompadour, the same thing was done. The same schemes were tried to ruin madame de Chateauroux. Whenever I have been suspected of any tenderness towards a particular female, every species of intrigue has been instantly put in requisition. Moreover,” he continued, “madame de Grammont attacks you with too much obstinacy not to make me believe but that she would employ all possible means to attain her end.” “Ah,” I exclaimed, “because she has participated in your friendship you are ready to support her.” “Do not say so in a loud tone,” he replied laughingly; “her joy would know no bounds if she could believe it was in her power to inspire you with jealousy.”