Three weeks after this I received an early visit from the duc de la Vrillière, who came to apprize me, that my protégée from the isle of St. Marguerite was in my antechamber awaiting permission to offer me her grateful thanks. I desired she might instantly be admitted; her appearance shocked me; not a single trace of that beauty which had proved so fatal to its possessor now remained. She was pale, emaciated, and her countenance, on which care and confinement had imprinted the wrinkles of premature old age, was sad and dejected even to idiocy. I could have wished that madame de Pompadour, by way of punishment for her cruelty, could but have seen the object of her relentless persecution. I think she would have blushed for herself. When the poor girl entered my apartment she looked wildly around her, and casting herself at my feet, inquired with many tears to what motive she was indebted for my generous interference in her behalf. The duc de la Vrillière contemplated with the utmost _sang froid_ the spectacle of a misery he had so largely contributed to. I requested of him to leave us to ourselves. I then raised my weeping _protégée_, consoled her to the best of my ability, and then requested her to give me the history of her captivity. Her story was soon told: she had been an inhabitant of the same prison for seventeen years and five months, without either seeing a human being, or hearing the sound of a human voice. Her recital made me shudder, and I promised her that henceforward her life should be rendered as happy as it had hitherto been miserable. The king supped with me that evening. By some singular chance he was on this occasion in the happiest temper possible: he laughed, sung, joked with such unusual spirits, that I hesitated ere I disturbed a gaiety to which Louis XV was so little prone. However, I took him aside, saying, “Sire, I have to ask atonement and reparation for a most horrible piece of injustice.” After which, I proceeded to acquaint him with the distressing history of his unfortunate mistress. He appeared perfectly well to recollect the female to whom I alluded; and when I ceased speaking, he said, with a half-suppressed sigh, “Poor creature! she has indeed been unfortunate; seventeen years and five months in prison! The duc de la Vrillière is greatly to blame in the affair; but when once he has placed persons between four walls, he thinks he has fulfilled the whole of his duty. He should recollect, that a good memory is a necessary qualification for situation he holds; it is indeed an imperative duty in him to think of the poor wretches he deprives of their liberty.” “And in you too, sire,” interrupted I; “and it appears to me that you have lost sight of it, in the present affair, as culpably as your minister.”