Every instant of this day and the next, that I did not spend by the sick-bed of Louis XV, were engrossed by most intimate friends, the ducs d’Aiguillon, de Cossé, etc., mesdames de Mirepoix, de Forcalquier, de Valentinois, de l’Hôpital, de Montmorency, de Flaracourt, and others. As yet, none of my party had abandoned me; the situation of affairs was not, up to the present, sufficiently clear to warrant an entire defect Mathon, whom chance had conducted to Versailles during the last week, came to share with Henriette, my sisters-in-law, and my niece, the torments and uncertainties which distracted my mind. We were continually in a state of mortal alarm, dreading every instant to hear that the king was aware of his malady, and the danger which threatened, and our fears but too well proclaimed our persuasion that such a moment would be the death-blow to our hopes. It happened that in this exigency, as it most commonly occurs in affairs of great importance, all our apprehensions had been directed towards the ecclesiastics, while we entirely overlooked the probability that the abrupt la Martinière might, in one instant, become the cause of our ruin. All this so entirely escaped us, that we took not the slightest precaution to prevent it. No sooner was the news of the king being attacked with small-pox publicly known, than a doctor Sulton, an English physician, the pretended professor of an infallible cure for this disease, presented himself at Versailles, and tendered his services. The poor man was simple enough to make his first application to those medical attendants already intrusted with the management of his majesty, but neither of them would give any attention to his professions of skill to overcome so fatal a malady. On the contrary, they treated him as a mere quack, declared that they would never consent to confide the charge of their august patient to the hands of a stranger whatever he might be. Sulton returned to Paris, and obtaining an audience of the duc d’Orleans, related to him what had passed between himself and the king’s physicians. The prince made it his business the following day to call upon the princesses, to whom he related the conversation he had held with doctor Sulton the preceding evening.