Notwithstanding such indications of the Cabal being possessed of the King’s confidence without the privity of the Minister, the faction of the latter had established such a tone, that the person of all France who seemed most in disgrace, was the new mistress. The men, indeed, began by degrees to drop their visits at her apartment, and then sparingly to appear at her toilet. The women shunned her as they do an unhappy young damsel, who has fallen a victim to a first and real passion. At Marly, in the very salon with the King, it was a solitude round his mistress: and one or two of the ladies attending the Mesdames deigning to leave their names at her door, were scratched out of the list for Marly by _Madame_. On the other hand, the Duchesses de Choiseul and Grammont and the Princesse de Beauvau, refusing to stoop even to that piece of form, were totally excluded from the King’s suppers. Instead of being mortified, they engaged all their female relations in the same insult. It became necessary for the King to form a new set of company; yet all his authority could assemble but five or six women of rank, and those of the most decried characters, except the last I shall mention. There was Madame de l’Hôpital, an ancient mistress of the Prince de Soubize; the Comtesse de Valentinois, of the highest birth, very rich but very foolish, and as far from a Lucretia as Madame du Barry herself. Madame de Flavacourt was another, a suitable companion to both in virtue and understanding. She was sister to three of the King’s earliest mistresses, and had aimed at succeeding them. The Maréchale Duchesse de Mirepoix[14] was the last, and a very important acquisition. No man, no woman in France, had a superior understanding; and it was as agreeable as it was profound. Haughty, but supple, she could command respect even from those that knew her; and could transform herself into, or stoop to, any character that suited her views. All this art, all these talents, were drowned in such an overwhelming passion for play, that though she had long had singular credit with the King, she reduced her favour to an endless solicitation for money to pay her debts. Her constant necessities were a constant source of degrading actions. She had left off red, and acted devotion to attain the post of Dame d’Honneur to the Queen; the very next day she was seen riding backwards with Madame de Pompadour in the latter’s own coach. In one of her moments of poverty she had offended Choiseul by matching her nephew, the Prince d’Henin, with the daughter of Madame de Monconseil, a capital enemy of the Prime Minister, but rich and intriguing.[15] To accelerate the Prime Minister’s ruin, to secure her own favour, and in opposition to her sister-in-law, the Princesse de Beauvau, Madame de Mirepoix now united herself strictly, not only with the mistress, but with Maréchale Richelieu, who, having killed her first husband, the Prince of Lixin, thirty years before in a duel, had been obliged, as